February 27

General Membership Meeting

You are invited to our upcoming virtual General Membership Meeting on Tuesday, February 27th, at 6:30pm.

General Membership Meetings (GMM) are open to all members, and are a great way to get plugged into what the local has been up to. We'll get to hear from the executive board, we'll have updates for the upcoming winter term, and we'll be voting on some important motions for the union. If you are looking for ways to get involved, or just want to be in the loop, the GMM is the place for you!

Meeting Materials

The meeting agenda can be seen here

Executive board reports can be seen here

Accessibility
CUPE 4600 strives to make our meetings as accessible as possible for our members. It is our goal to ensure that all members can participate fully in all aspects of the union. If you have any accessibility needs that you would like us to be aware of, please fill out this short form.

Childcare
The Child Care Benefit is available for both Contract Instructors and Teaching Assistants. It is intended to help cover childcare costs for members while they are participating in union activities, such as meetingsor pickets. Reimbursement is $3/hour for subsidized childcare, or $6/hour for non-subsidized childcare. This benefit is administered by the Secretary Treasurer (treasurer@cupe4600.ca) and VP Internal (vp.internal@cupe4600.ca). You can contact them to make a claim.

February 26 (Today)

Mobilization Committee Meeting

Next meeting: Monday February 26th, 3pm, Nicol 3022

You are invited to join the next meeting of the CUPE 4600 Mobilization Committee.

What is the Mobilization Committee?

The CUPE 4600 Mobilization Committee is made of of members from both units. You do not need to be an elected official of the union in order to join the committee. No prior union organizing experience necessary, all are welcome!

This committee is tasked with organizing campaigns, events, protests, pickets, and educational workshops for the membership. The goals of this work change from year to year, depending on what is happening at Carleton and in the community. Sometimes this work focuses on preparing for a potential strike, other times it might be more aimed at supporting other unions or community groups. This is decided by the members of the committee.

What happens at the meetings?

The meetings take place every two weeks, and are a space for members to discuss upcoming projects. This committee is chaired by an elected member, who runs the meetings and prepares an agenda.

At the meeting, all members are encouraged to participate in the discussions and decision making process. Meeting participants will get to help plan the projects put forward by the committee, sign up for volunteering tasks, prepare materials, and learn some useful hands-on organizing skills in the process!

The meetings happen in a hybrid format, meaning it is a mix of in-person and online participation.

We hope to see you at our next meeting!

If you have any questions, you can email mobcor@cupe4600.ca to be put in touch with the committee chair

March 5th

Rainbow Caucus meeting

March 5th, 6-7pm, on Zoom

Join us for this term's first meeting of the Rainbow Caucus. The Rainbow caucus is for members of both units who identify as LGBTQ+

This caucus organizes political events, social events, ensures that LGBTQ+ issues are well represented within the local, and also functions as a place for queer union members to connect with each other. 

Chair election

At the March 5th meeting, we will be electing a caucus chair. The chair's role is to plan and organize the caucus meetings, promote the caucus' work and events, and ensure the smooth functioning of the caucus. For more information about the role of the chair, you can read our bylaws (here). 

Members of both units are welcome to nominate themselves for caucus chair. If more than one person is nominated, a vote will be held during the March 5th meeting. 

Friday, March 1st

Of Fruit Machines and Third Editions: Queer Histories and Queer Resistance

Location: Dunton Tower, Room 2017, Carleton University

Gary Kinsman and Patrizia Gentile present a discussion on Carleton University's role in the Canadian war on queers. The presentations link the launch of the 3rd edition of The Regulation of Desire: Queer Histories, Queer Struggles with a focus on one of the Department of Psychology's former chairs and the developer of the fruit machine, an anti-queer detection technology, Dr. Frank R. Wake. In addition to addressing this history drawn from The Canadian War on Queers: National Security as Sexual Regulation (2010), The Regulation of Desire (3rd ed.) also includes an analysis on the limitations of the 2017 "apology" for the purge campaigns and the emergence of the neo-liberal queer.

Gary Kinsman is a queer liberation, anti-oppression, and anti-capitalist activist and is the author of The Regulation of Desire: Queer Histories, Queer Struggles, and co-author of The Canadian War on Queers: National Security as Sexual Regulation, and co-editor of We Still Demand!: Redefining Resistance in Sex and Gender Struggles.

Patrizia Gentile is a professor in the Human Rights and Social Justice program and the Feminist Institute of Social Transformation at Carleton, and is the author of University Queen of the Maple Leaf: Beauty Contests and Settler Femininity, and co-author of The Canadian War on Queers: National Security as Sexual Regulation, and co-editor of We Still Demand!: Redefining Resistance in Sex and Gender Struggles.

Sponsored by FIST, ICCJ, ISS, SOC/ANTHICCJ 

event page for the talk:https://carleton.ca/.../of-fruit-machines-and-third.../

Accessibility information for Dunton Tower provided by CU: https://carleton.ca/campus/buildings/dunton-tower/

Help us to make this a covid-cautious environment. Masking is required.

Thursday, February 29th

Book Launch: The Regulation Of Desire: Queer Histories, Queer Struggles

On February 29th join Gary Kinsman, Laura Hall, and River Rossi for a book launch and discussion about Kinsman's third edition of The Regulation of Desire: Queer Histories, Queer Struggles.

This launch for the 3rd edition of The Regulation of Desire covers what has happened since the 2nd edition was published in 1996, including the emergence of the white neoliberal queer, the right-wing attacks on trans people, and the need for abolitionist, anti-racist queer / trans liberation movements.

Help us to make this a covid-cautious environment. Masking is required. 

Gary Kinsman (he/they) is a long-time queer liberation and anti-capitalist activist currently involved in the No Pride in Policing Coalition and Queers for Palestine - Toronto. He is the co-author of The Canadian War on Queers (with Patrizia Gentile) and the Third Edition of The Regulation of Desire: Queer Histories, Queer Struggles which has just come out. 

Dr. Laura Hall (she/her) is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Carleton University. She is a graduate of York University’s Faculty of Environmental Studies. Her work is about ‘learning to learn’, from within an Indigenous worldview, focused on sustainability, the rights of Indigenous women and Two-Spirit/LGBTQ communities, and land back. Laura was raised by her Mohawk mother and English-Canadian father on Anishinaabe territory in N’Swakamok (Sudbury). Her current interests are settler colonial theory and intersectionality, pop culture analysis, and bridge-building between social work and sociology, as well as Indigenous environmental theory and sociology. 

River Rossi (they/them) is a queer, trans, anti-capitalist scholar living in Ottawa. Their past work examined the social relations of touch surrounding 1980s and 1990s AIDS activism in the Canadian context. More broadly, their doctoral research examines the Canadian state’s regulation of gender, sexuality, and disability. Their research resides in the fields of critical disability studies, Mad studies, critical trans studies, and queer anti-capitalist social movement history. 

Cost: Free

Accessibility information for Perfect Books: Front door and store are all one level. Directly in front of the store there is a 3" step up from the sidewalk onto a landing, but just south of the store entrance the sidewalk and landing are completely level and you can enter the store without needing to cross the 3" step. The lighting in the building is florescent

Solidarity with CUPE 3903

3000 Contract Faculty, Graduate Assistants, and Teaching Assistants, who provide the majority of teaching at York University, are on strike as of this morning. 

They are striking for fair wages that represent the true cost of living increases that workers have been seeing in recent years, and we believe they deserve a fair deal! 

You can learn more about the CUPE 3903 bargaining demands and strike updates here

Expected funding boost for Ontario universities a 'drop in the bucket,' critics say

From the Ottawa Citizen:

Andrew Robinson has been a contract instructor in Carleton's physics department since 2011, teaching first- and second-year science and engineering students.

Robinson said he hopes the funding will be directed to them, though he's not optimistic.

"Small classes, permanent instructors, good libraries, lots of support staff — all of those things are really up to the bone at the moment," he said.

"I think [the money] will just disappear into the general operating fund of the university and individual departments will probably not see very much of it."

Robinson said he's also used to contract work with little job security and low pay.

"I will never ever get a permanent job," he said. "If you work out my average rate of pay, it's about $26 an hour."

Read the story here