A statement from Crystal Krauter-Maki, educational assistant and CUPE Local 4148 president, regarding the ransomware hack of Huron Superior Catholic District School Board

10 January 2023

A STATEMENT FROM CRYSTAL KRAUTER-MAKI, EDUCATIONAL ASSISTANT AND CUPE LOCAL 4148 PRESIDENT, REGARDING THE RANSOMWARE HACK OF HURON SUPERIOR CATHOLIC DISTRICT SCHOOL BOARD

Members of Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Local 4148 are caretakers, maintenance workers, carpenters, educational assistants (EAs), early childhood educators (ECEs), and clerical staff employed by the Huron Superior Catholic District School Board (HSCDSB).

There are very few, if any, other organizations to which workers supply so much personal information as they provide to their employers.

The executive committee of CUPE 4148 remains concerned about the impact of identifying info and financial details of members, including their full legal names, home addresses, dates of birth, social insurance numbers, bank account numbers, and more, being stolen from the school board in December.

Frontline education workers are the lowest-paid employees of school boards throughout Ontario and we are the lowest-paid HSCDSB workers.

The theft of our personal and financial information from our employer’s files was disproportionately hard on 10-month employees – EAs, ECEs, and most secretaries – who are laid off every Christmas and casual employees who work on a call-in basis because this ransomware hack caused delays in the submission of our records of employment for Employment Insurance and board payroll problems.

The CUPE Local 4148 executive committee is taking this matter seriously. We will be investigating it further and advocating for our coworkers with the goal of preventing any further hardship from the unauthorized disclosure of our personal information while it was being held in the care of our employer.

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For more information:

Ken Marciniec
CUPE Communications
kmarciniec@cupe.ca
1-416-803-6066 (cell)