Full bibliography

As public anxiety over access to education increases, public-sector workers are directly able to perceive the extent to which exclusion, rather than public- access, now characterizes post-secondary education in an era of privatization. This paper will address some of the recent experiences of university workers who are members of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE). Here we shall identify three issues facing workers in the sector including: i) the privatization of universities through government policy shifts, ii) the employer-led reorganization of work, and iii) university workers’ campaigns to resist and transform these conditions. For public sector workers, decreasing access to social programs, under funding and the intensification of work are very clearly linked. As the restructured state brings public services more fully into the market and increasingly under the direct control of a global capitalist class, democratic rights are eroded. Still, this privatization dynamic is not uni-directional. Public sector workers and their community allies have been part of the history of state restructuring through their conscious acts of resistance, collective bargaining strategies, militancy and coalition-building.