October 14, 2026
Dear David Myles/Wayne Long,
The Association of University of New Brunswick Teachers (AUNBT) represents approximately 624 full-time faculty and librarians and 563 contract academic instructors in Fredericton, Saint John, and Moncton. We are writing about the proposed changes to the Canada Labour Code and what they could mean for workers in our community and across Canada.
While workers and families face real pressure in our daily lives, large corporations continue to post record-breaking profits. At the same time, our members are dealing with the rising cost of living, a strained healthcare system, provincial funding cuts to higher education, and, for many contract academics, already precarious employment.
Bill C-39 would give the government new and expanded powers to intervene in and shut down legal strikes. This is an unprecedented move that would restrict workers’ right to withdraw our labour and use our full bargaining power to reach a fair deal.
We urge you to oppose these changes and protect workers’ right to strike.
Collective bargaining is how workers and companies reach agreements that work for both sides. The right to strike gives workers leverage at the bargaining table. Without that leverage, workers have less power to negotiate fair wages, safe workplaces, secure jobs, and solutions to the problems we face at work.
In the higher education sector, with the funding cuts to higher education that are happening across Canada, universities are incentivized to attack the wages of all university workers, including faculty. Not just helping to support the competitive wages that are essential to keeping excellent faculty in New Brunswick, collective bargaining works to secure and improve important academic values like academic freedom, collegial governance, intellectual property rights, and employment equity. AUNBT members play a crucial role in educating New Brunswickers, working to ensure that the province’s students have access to leading-edge knowledge in a wide range of fields and opportunities to develop the research, literacy, numeracy, and critical-thinking skills that will allow them to thrive in the future. Collective bargaining helps to ensure that the province’s students have the best possible learning conditions. Even more, research by AUNBT members has been essential to the development of social and political policy, medical and environmental knowledge, and to arts and cultural production, while also contributing millions to the economy.
Our members work to build a stronger Canada every day.
Given the urgency of these proposed changes, we request a meeting at your earliest convenience to discuss their impact on workers in Fredericton-Oromocto and Saint John-Kennebecasis.
Sincerely,
Adam Wilson
President
Association of the University of New Brunswick Teachers