TORONTO, Jan. 29, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- It has been nearly one year since high-risk asbestos abatement projects in the Medical Sciences Building (MSB) led to serious asbestos contamination and exposure to asbestos in the MSB. On January 31, 2018, at noon, at University College Room 152, a broad coalition of employee and student groups, whose members were impacted by these asbestos abatement breaches will host a panel to discuss how these failures occurred and what questions remain outstanding. A lively discussion will take place in response to the questions: Has the University’s senior administration reported fully enough about what went wrong? Why aren’t members of the U of T community as safe as they could be?
“We still have many unanswered questions about last year’s asbestos abatement project and exposure at U of T, and with current asbestos abatements ongoing campus-wide our members have serious concerns,” states Pamela Arancibia, Chair of CUPE 3902.
Titled “Asbestos on Campus, One Year Later: What have we learned? What questions remain?,” the panel is jointly co-sponsored by CUPE 3902, the University of Toronto Faculty Association (UTFA), USW 1998, CUPE 3261, Arts and Science Students’ Union (ASSU), Association of Part-Time Undergraduate Students (APUS), IBEW 353, LiUNA 183, the Scarborough Students’ Union, and the University of Toronto Graduate Students’ Union.
Guests will include:
- Melisa Bayon, Political Action and Outreach Director, Ontario Federation of Labour
- Natasha Luckhardt, Program Development Officer, Workers Health & Safety Centre
- Pamela Arancibia, PhD student, University of Toronto, and Chair, CUPE 3902
- Pat Brubaker, Professor, University of Toronto, Departments of Physiology and Medicine
Also, Mark Lai, President, ECOH, UTFA’s Advisors on Environmental Health and Safety, will provide information about Asbestos Testing Protocols.
The Canadian Union of Public Employees, Local 3902 is a labour union local representing sessional lecturers, teaching assistants, postdoctoral fellows and other contract academic staff at the University of Toronto, Canada.
For more information, contact:
- Jess Taylor, Internal Liaison Officer, CUPE 3902, ilo@cupe3902.org, 416-593-7057
- Tiffany Balducci, Staff Representative, CUPE 3902, rep@cupe3902.org, 416-527-0179