Dear Editor,
I write to you as a concerned member of CUPE 3912, the union representing NSCAD Teaching Assistants, Research Assistants and Individual Course Appointees currently fighting for fair wages at NSCAD (Nova Scotia College of Art and Design).
I am keenly aware that — given the current news cycle — any prospect of our comparatively small fight for living wages garnering significant coverage is an uphill battle. As a society, we are swamped daily by anxiety in local and global news. In the “grand scheme of things” (a phrase which seems to proffer more underlying structure than can be truthfully located in the world today) the demands of a few hundred per contract staff at an arts university understandably flies under the radar of most people struggling to make ends meet in their day-to-day lives.
Of course, there is the economy. Gas prices. War.
And… art?
We get it, we really do. But, hear us out: NSCAD has not given us a pay raise since 1984!
To put that into perspective:
The year is 1984.
Stevie Wonder’s “I Just Called to Say I Love You” is playing on the radio, while Prince’s ‘Purple Rain’ blares on the boombox. Bruce Springsteen is letting us know he was ‘Born in the U.S.A.’
At the cinema, we choose from ‘Ghostbusters’, ‘Gremlins’, and ‘Karate Kid’. Arnold Schwarzenegger tells us he’ll “be back”.
We lose Marvin Gaye and Truman Capote that year.
The very first Apple Macintosh computer is unveiled, its design resembling a typewriter. In a now infamous Super Bowl ad referencing Orwell’s famous dystopian novel, Apple declares “You will see why 1984, won’t be like ‘1984’”. Fair enough. But, for all of us fighting for fair wages at NSCAD, it turns out 2026 is an awful lot like 1984.
Our bank statements confirm it.
Yours truly,
A worker striking in the year 2026