UNION VS. UNION
Ryerson Students’ Union sees no benefit to membership in Canadian Federation of Students, but bylaws make it difficult to leave,
Ryerson University’s student union says the national organization its members pay to advocate on their behalf no longer benefits them, but the organization’s bylaws make it too difficult for them to leave.
The Canadian Federation of Students (CFS), made up of more than 80 student unions from colleges and universities across Canada, lobbies governments to abolish tuition, negotiates group deals for a variety of services and runs social advocacy campaigns on issues such as aboriginal education and sexual consent. The CFS represents more than 650,000 students, who pay a fee through their respective student unions.
Members of the Ryerson Students’ Union (RSU) paid more than $500,000 in fees to the CFS’s national and Ontario branches in the last academic year.
But the RSU has already stopped using many of the services CFS offers its members, said RSU vice-president education Victoria Morton.
“The positives (of membership)? I personally don’t see any,” Morton told the Star.
The CFS has an online catalogue through which members can purchase T-shirts, water bottles, stationery and other swag in bulk. Last school year, the RSU began purchasing items such as T-shirts and water bottles from an independent vendor at a lower price.
The RSU has also stopped insuring its students with a plan offered to CFS members. Instead, it has hired its own insurance broker, a switch that Morton said has saved her union considerable money.
The University of Toronto Students’ Union (UTSU) says its members paid $770,000 in CFS fees last year.
It, too, has stopped using the CFS-recommended insurance plan and has been buying more and more material from independent vendors instead of from the CFS catalogue.
“We started to explore other options and they did prove to be more economical,” said UTSU president Jasmine Denike.
CFS chair Bilan Arte told the Star the federation has more to offer than the services that Ryerson and U of T’s unions may or may not use.
“I think it’s not true that students at these different campuses aren’t benefitting from services of the federation because our advocacy work, our government relations work, our campaigns work is a fundamental aspect . . . of our organization,” Arte said. UTSU and the RSU were among 10 student unions that wrote an open letter to the CFS on Sept. 19 laying out a list of concerns with the organization, including that the process of leaving the CFS is “overly burdensome.”
CFS bylaws state that in order to hold a referendum on leaving the CFS, student unions must have a petition signed by 20 per cent of their members. By contrast, it only takes a petition with 10 per cent of union members’ signatures for a referendum on joining the CFS.
“For regular students to try to get 20 per cent of the student population to sign a petition — keeping in mind the maximum voter turnout for (RSU) elections is 10 per cent — it’s unreasonable,” Morton said.
Once a petition has been accepted, the CFS appoints a returns officer to oversee a paper-ballot referendum, which must have at least 10-per-cent voter turnout to be valid.
That stipulation resulted in U of T’s Graduate Students’ Union (UTGSU) taking the CFS to court after its 2014 referendum to leave fell seven votes short of reaching the 10-per-cent mark.
The UTGSU claimed that decisions made by the CFS-appointed chief returning officer, including the choice not to put a polling station at a North York satellite campus, prevented hundreds of students from voting. In July 2016, Judge Liza Sheard upheld the results of the referendum, ruling that the returning officer acted in good faith and that the referendum was fair and just.
Arte said she stands by the CFS bylaws in spite of criticism from some student unions.
“The process we have is the result of over 35 years of debate, discussion and amendments and conversations that have happened at general meetings,” Arte said.