Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include comments from the TRAC union.
A group of Concordia University invigilators is calling on the province to launch an inquiry into what it claims to be illegal activity in their union’s practices.
A group of invigilators, alongside the Centre for Research Action on Race Relations (CRARR), stood at the foot of the University’s Hall building in downtown Montreal on Tuesday to denounce the illegal activity of their union, the Teaching and Research Assistants at Concordia ( TRAC).
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They claim that five out of the six members of their union’s executive committee are breaking the law by sitting on the union’s board.
Like many unions in Quebec, TRAC is incorporated under the Professional Syndicates Act.
TRAC represents more than 3,000 teaching and research assistants as well as invigilators, the majority of whom are international students.
Invigilators are responsible for administering all aspects of exams and test done in the school.
Under the PSA law, which TRAC is governed by, it states that “only Canadian citizens may be members of the administrative council of a union of form part of its personnel.”
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The majority of the members apart of the union’s executive committee are international students and are not Canadian citizens, according to public school documents.
The TRAC union representatives find the accusations troubling saying that some of the executive members do indeed have their Canadian citizenship .
“These individuals have assumed our citizenship status based on the color of our skin,” Zarish Abbas grievance officer for the union said.
According to union members, Concordia and the union representatives have turned a blind eye to non-citizens being elected to the board for at least the past two years.
“The university is fully aware for the last few years of its actions,” said Fo Niemi, CRARRR executive director.
In response to the inquiry’s accusations, the TRAC union said in a statement that all of members can equally participate within the union.
“TRAC does not discriminate against any member on the basis of their citizenship,” Abbas said.
Abbas described the PSA article as dated and went as far to call the nearly century year-old law racist.
“The citizenship clause in the Professional Syndicates Act is almost 100 years old and does not appear to be in force in Quebec as many unions have non-Canadian citizens on their executive,” Abbas said.
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Probir Gupta a university invigilator claims this skirting of the rules is being done knowingly by the members of the committee to take advantage of financial benefits.
“For an international student who is a non-Canadian citizen comes here and treats the Quebec funding as a casino and personal piggy bank, that’s the problem,” Gupta said.
An amount of $82,000 is allotted per year to the executive committee, which is divided among the members who must perform 3,000 hours of work.
“We are hard-working, law-abiding, poorly paid and now unemployed workers whose union executives openly violate the law while getting paid by the university to negotiate our working conditions,” invigilator Kathy Fugère said.
“Something is definitely wrong here.”
In the last two years, dissatisfied with the school’s response, invigilators have brought the issue to the attention of both the federal and the provincial ministers of labor, migration and revenue.
They have not received a response.
Abbas says the union is “deeply upset,” with the position that CRARR has taken defending the use of the PSA legislation to remove non-Canadian citizens from the unions executive committee.
In a October of 2015 CRARR urged the provincial government in a letter to the Minister of Justice at the time to amend the ruling which dates back to 1924, calling it a “relic of the past” and ” unconstitutional.”
Niemi says CRARR stands by these statements and encourages TRAC Union’s stance against the legislation.
“Unless the law is constitutionally challenged, we have to follow it,” Niemi said.
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Concordia University said in a statement: “The administrative relationship between any union and the university is governed by collective agreements which Concordia adheres to,” university spokesperson Vannia Maestracci said.
She also clarified that unions are independent from the university.
“Concordia values and respects the rights of faculty and staff members to choose to be represented by a union or staff association.”
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