On October 1, five Midnight Kitchen (MK) employees were laid off by the SSMU Board of Directors (BoD) without notice. This action came as a shock to the MK employees, the SSMUnion, their labour union, and McGill students who use the service. Following the employees dismissal, all SSMU members were informed of the BoD’s decision via a mass email titled “Reorganization of the Midnight Kitchen Service.”
The email has become a point of contention between MK supporters and those in favour of the reorganization. The email cites that the primary reason for reorganization came from a review of MK’s “operations and finances,” which revealed that only a “small portion” of the budget went towards food. The BoD states the reorganization will be to create more “paid and volunteer” opportunities for students, and also will “no longer be limited to exclusively vegan options.” Though in the email, which includes no concrete plan for how meat will be included in the service in the future, the BoD cites their inclusion of meat as a part of their goal to make “food services more accessible and responsive to all.” The inclusion of meat in the service would not necessarily cater to students who have vegan, vegetarian, dairy-free, halal, or kosher diets; however, the vegan and nut-free meals previously provided by MK made their service accessible to a diverse range of people with different diets. To “ensure transparency,” the BoD included MK’s fiscal budgets from 2022 to 2025 in the notice. These budgets were not accompanied by additional context detailing how MK operates, notably excluding how the service receives many donations from food security groups and farms to sustain their operations, outlined in an FAQ posted to the Instagram account @save.mk.coalition. The email also omitted the BoD’s plan for MK’s future and dates where members could expect the service to return.
From this email, many were driven to @save.mk.coalition’s comment section, an account created in solidarity with MK, to share their opinions on MK’s restructuring. Several arguments ensued in the comments of their first post. These responses demonstrated a roughly even split between those for and against the MK’s restructuring. One user left a comment beginning with “It is very disheartening to see the SSMU board-glazers in here celebrating the shutdown of this campus institution.” Others left comments such as “me when 75% of their budget goes towards salaries (crying emoji) but remember they’re a ‘non-profit, volunteer run’ service.”
The comment section under the post has become a microcosm for students’ reaction to MK’s restructuring. Students expressed their inability to understand how MK operated with the organization’s budget reports due to the lack of context in the email sent by SSMU. To combat misinformation, the account posted an FAQ which directly addresses the commenters’ questions. This post draws comparisons between MK and the People’s Potato, their Concordia University counterpart, who is able to serve free lunch four times a week, but primarily due to the fact that they have “a much larger kitchen space and a significantly larger team of staff.”
Nonetheless, there is still ambiguity for what the future of MK will be like. One of the primary concerns of those who utilize MK’s meal services is when they will return. In an email to the McGill Daily, SSMU’s president Dymetri Taylor, stated that the “‘best case scenario’ is that five weekly servings will be undertaken starting the first week of January 2026; however, our more realistic estimate is that it’ll be three servings per week, starting in the first week of January, with an escalation to five servings starting in mid-February.” Despite his announcement, there remains uncertainty on whether or not MK’s new structure will be able to achieve this “best case scenario.” Taylor further estimated that weekly lunches would return by mid- November, leaving students without the service for over a month.
In addition, Taylor clarified what MK would look like after undergoing reorganization. The role of the new Food Services and Hospitality Manager, would be to “manage and guide the service while also serving as a mentor to students,” a role which he compared to the “Gerts Bar Manager and the Gerts Cafe Manager” in his correspondence with the Daily. Though these positions have worked for Gerts Bar and Cafe, Orion, one of the recent MK hires who never received a contract from SSMU to make their position official, doesn’t believe it will work for MK.
In a verbal statement to the McGill Daily, Orion mentions how the format of a singular person overseeing student labor “simply will not work in the MK kitchen.” They, similar to other recent hires, believed that since they were offered a job in September, MK would continue to operate smoothly. Unfortunately, Orion states that they and the other new hires were not given their contracts before learning of MK’s restructuring, despite “a direct promise from Dymetri Taylor during the most recent General Assembly.” Cecelia Callaghan, a U2 student, also mentioned hearing Taylor promise to send the contracts during her speech at the rally following the announcement of the reorganization. Though the BoD claimed the restructuring would afford students “a range of paid and volunteer opportunities,” Cece and the other student hires, as of now, have not been given a role in the reorganized MK.
On October 2, a rally in solidarity of MK took place featuring speakers from SSMUnion, the Association of Graduate Students Employed at McGill (AGSEM), People’s Potato, and two of MK’s recent hires that were never given their contracts. This rally follows directly on the heels of the October 1 inter-union rally held by AGSEM, as well as the Association of McGill University Support Employees (AMUSE) and the Association of McGill and Professors of the Faculty of Arts (AMPFA), that called out the McGill Administration for their austerity practices in light of the recent budget cuts. In their FAQ post, @save.mk.coalition asks the SSMU for “democracy, accountability, and representation that protects us from austerity.”
In its 22 years of operation, MK has made inroads within the greater Montreal area and among the radical community. Beyond their weekly lunch service, MK has formed relationships with community organizations like QPIRG McGill and Happy Belly, hosted workshops, and maintained a community garden. They have pledged solidarity with Palestine, Sudan, and Congo, and have catered at many different events like QPIRG McGill’s Rad Frosh. These kinds of relationships are extremely important, and caused many commenters to lament the loss of this iteration of the service. One user who ended their comment with “MK provides an invaluable service to the community” sums up the sentiment.
The five laid-off MK employees have been most impacted from this reorganization. Many of these employees had been working at MK for more than five years. Yet, per the budgets attached to email and as mentioned by Orion, they were being paid below the livable wage according to l’Institut de recherche et d’information socioéconomique.
Beyond MK, Queer McGill has also undergone upheavals, such as the emptying of their library room on the fourth floor of the SSMU building. In a statement sent to the Daily from Juno Cinq-Mars, U2 student, and the rest of the coordinators on the Queer McGill team, it was revealed that even after filling out an Office Relocation Proposal, their request for a new library space was “denied,” while the space “appears to be empty and is not bookable on VEMS.” They also point out how these changes “have not benefited us as students, especially queer students, whatsoever. We are constantly being swept under the rug.”