Students at Concordia will begin to go on strike as of tomorrow, Monday 5 March.  Some of the actions that students may take include boycotting classes and conferences, establishing picket lines which may or may not block access to classes or buildings, and other non-violent direct action such as flash mobs, teach-ins, street theater, and the like.

IMPORTANT: The student strike is not a labour strike, and it does not apply to your duties as a TA or RA.  Your TA or RA contract is an employment contract, and it remains fully in force.  If you fail to fulfill your obligations as an employee you may be subject to disciplinary measures.

You must fulfill your obligations as set out in your contract: go to class, go to your conference sections, grade assignments and tests, be in your office for office hours, answer emails, prepare labs, etc.  If you do not work as usual, you may be liable to disciplinary measures.

That said, students on strike may interfere with normal activities.

• It is up to the instructor to hold class or not – if you are normally expected to attend class go to class, and stick with the instructor: if the instructor decides that class is on, then class is on.
• It is up to you to decide whether to cancel a conference – go to your conference sections, and if no students come to the conference for fifteen minutes, you can cancel the conference.  Since many conferences often have low attendance, if any students come to the conference, then the conference should be held as usual.  Note: a conference is not a replacement for a cancelled class; if a class pertaining to a conference was not held, consult with your supervisor as to how to spend the conference time most productively.
• Although you may wish to support striking students, you must still accomodate students who are not on strike: you must answer emails, you must be available for office hours, you must prepare for conferences, and so on, subject to any modifications to your duties made by your supervisor within the terms of your contract (no different or additional duties may be assigned without your consent).
• It is up to the instructor to decide whether late papers will be accepted, whether tests will be held at a later date, and whether any other changes will be made to the course outline.  You should respect any changes to the course outline, but do not keep working after the end date of your contract.  Any work performed after the end date of your contract must be the subject of a new contract.
• If your class, conference, or lab, is blocked by striking students, under no circumstances should you escalate the situation:
  • do not call security to remove students (they cannot do so legally) – only call security in case of a real emergency
  • do not try to force your way in to a class or building
  • do not engage in any kind of physical confrontation
  • do not enter into any kind of aggressive verbal exchange

If you find yourself in a situation where you do not know what to do contact:

• TRAC at 514 848 2424 x2917 or info@trac-union.ca
• the GSA at 514 848 2424 x7900 or info@gsaconcordia.ca if you are a graduate student
• the CSU at 514 848 7474 if you or info@csu.qc.ca are an undergraduate student.

Research Assistants

Research Assistants should continue to work as usual.

Concordia Declaration

We encourage all TAs and RAs to read the Concordia Declaration for Quality and Accessibility in Higher Education, a statement of understanding between students and faculty regarding the possible consequences of a student strike at Concordia.  Most members of TRAC are in the unique position of being both academic employees and students, and so face more complicated decisions.  We feel that the Declaration can provide some guidance as to the important issues, and can inform the choices we will be making in the near future.

An appeal from the GSA and CSU. 

Dear TAs and RAs at Concordia,

This is a message from Robert Sonin (Graduate Students’ Association) and Lex Gill (Concordia Student Union), the Presidents of both the graduate and undergraduate students’ associations. Together our membership totals approximately 45,000 students and stakeholders at Concordia University.

Normally, we don’t find ourselves in a position where you would receive an email of this nature, but extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures, so we’ve decided that we must appeal directly to you for support. We are asking you to join your colleagues in signing the Concordia Declaration for Quality and Accessibility in Higher Education, a statement of understanding between students and faculty regarding the possible consequences of a student strike at Concordia.

With great respect for your academic freedom and no desire to impede your ability to carry out your contractual and academic responsibilities, we ask you to consider signing The Concordia Declaration, a simple statement that you will try to accommodate students in reasonable and appropriate ways if they choose to participate in the strike. With this simple gesture, you can let Concordia students know that their TAs and RAs care about their futures and about the future of higher education.

The Charest government has proposed a 75% tuition fee increase over the next five years. We are convinced that this will directly impair Concordia’s ability to remain bothaccessible and competitive. Beyond the obvious and well-researched statistics regarding debt, drop-out rates, cuts to financial aid, and barriers to enrollment, this increase will have a grave personal impact on thousands of current and prospective Concordia students.

We all recognize that there is a funding crisis in Quebec’s post-secondary institutions, but the solution proposed by the government will do more harm than good. Most disturbingly, there have been no comprehensive studies done by the government regarding the impact of the tuition fee increase on accessibility, quality or enrollment. Indeed, even the Quebec government admits that less than one-third of the $850 million dollars in new revenue anticipated by their financing plan will ever reach Quebec universities in the form of funding for teaching, learning, services, or research.

We know that this is fundamentally an issue of mismanagement and government cut-backs, and not one of students having to pay their “fair share.” Indeed, every time tuition has been increased in this province, we’ve seen government funding decrease proportionally and administrative costs rise, leaving both students, workers and faculty shortchanged.

As we write this, there are over 60,000 students in the province already on strike, and this is clearly only the first wave of the movement. It now appears inevitable that many associations at Concordia will vote to join them in the coming weeks.

• By March 5th more than half a dozen departmental and faculty student associations at Concordia will have voted on strike mandates
• On March 6th at 12pm all Concordia graduate students will vote on a strike mandate
• On March 7th at 3pm all Concordia undergraduate students will vote on a strike mandate

If you have any questions about the upcoming votes, about what a strike could look like at Concordia, or how you can support your students — or, if you’re not convinced that the tuition fee increase will have a negative impact on higher education in the province, feel free to contact us directly.

At this critical time, the most important thing you can do for your students is to let them know that they have your support, no matter what they decide.

With great respect and high hopes,

Robert Sonin
Graduate Students’ Association
(514) 848 2424 ext. 7900
president@gsaconcordia.ca

Lex Gill
Concordia Student Union
(514) 848 7474 ext. 8899
president@csu.qc.ca

To sign the declaration, please visit:

http://concordiadeclaration.wordpress.com/ 

“We heard a loud and clear message tonight from the members of our union,” said Ryan Culpepper, chair of CUPE 3902’s bargaining team. “Clearly, what we’ve negotiated to this point is not sufficient. Because we are a democratic organization, any new contract has to be accepted by our members. We look forward to reopening negotiations with the University, and we’re committed to bringing back a contract that meets our members’ needs.”

Since the last contract between the University and the Union was signed in 2008, the size of tutorials and labs – which are taught by CUPE 3902 members – has grown dramatically. Research support has dropped, and the University has begun requiring CUPE 3902 members to perform new categories of work at lower pay rates. The University also eliminated the only guaranteed source of income for graduate students in the final years of their degrees. CUPE 3902 members spoke passionately at the meeting about each of these issues, and demanded a contract that seriously addresses them.

“We have been trying to negotiate a fair contract for seven months,” said James Nugent, the bargaining team’s chief spokesperson. “We’ve been fighting for better learning conditions for our students and better working conditions for our members. Last night, our members sent us back to the bargaining table to keep fighting for those things, and that’s what we intend to do.”

“Monday’s meeting emphasized the increasing frustration of our members,” said Wayne Dealy, Chair of CUPE 3902. “This is the second unequivocal message they’ve sent to the University of Toronto, and the University really needs to start listening.”

The previous CUPE 3902 – Unit 1 contract expired on April 30, 2011.

More information about CUPE 3902 bargaining can be found at www.cupe3902.org and at www.boundlessutoronto.ca.

After an increasing number of TAs assigned to eConcordia courses came forward last Fall semester complaining of obvious discrepancies between their job descriptions and their pay grades (among other problems), TRAC began to realize that this was an issue that affects many, if not all, eConcordia course TAs.

We have since been building a case on behalf of misclassified employees in order to convince Concordia to raise their pay grade to a level that matches their job descriptions, and is in line with what other TAs are paid for non-eConcordia courses.  Many grievances have already been filed, but we cannot file one grievance on behalf of all TAs.  So, in the lead up to discussions with the employer (Concordia University), we are encouraging all TAs for eConcordia courses to look into filing a grievance, so that we all have more to talk about.

• If you are a TA for an eConcordia course, please get in touch with TRAC as soon as possible to discuss your individual case, as well as the ongoing discussions with Concordia. The more people that report these issues the more effective our case will be.
• If you are a TA for a non-eConcordia course, please spread the word to anyone you know who is a TA for an eConcordia course.  This concerns you too: this reclassification could be used as a precedent to reclassify all TAs according to a self-serving interpretation of the Collective Agreement.

There are deadlines for grievances, and even though we have had the deadlines extended, we will not be able to deal with grievances arising last semester (Fall 2011) received after Friday 18 February 2012.  Filing a grievance is a very simple process, but it can take a very long time (usually several months).

Please also note that reprisals are absolutely illegal and that you may not be punished in any way for coming forward or for filing a grievance.

1. Read the Collective Agreement

 
Collective Agreement – Teaching Assistants [PDF]
Collective Agreement – Research Assistants [PDF]

2. Know Your Rights

You can look under the “Information for Members” section of the TRAC web site for more information about various issues that may affect you.  Here are a few things that you should know before you sign your contract:

• Your contract must specify a number of hours, and you do not need to work any more than those hours.

You are only required to work the number of hours in your contract.  If your department wants you to work more than that they will need to provide you with another contract that specifies how many more hours they want you to work.

• Your contract must specify starting and ending dates, and you do not need to work outside of those dates.

You are only required to work for the period that your contract covers, whether or not you have worked the number of hours specified.  For example, if you have a contract for 130 hours that ends on 6 December 2010, but as of 6 December 2010 you have only worked 120 hours, you cannot be asked to put in the 10 missing hours over the Winter break, or in the Winter term.  Once the contract ends, so does your obligation.

• Your contract must contain a job description – i.e., specify what the job entails, your duties and responsibilities, and you do not need to do work not covered in your job description.

If your contract does not specify a job, you need not do it.  For example, if you are hired to do marking and nothing else, you need not answer emails, hold office hours, or attend classes.  Everything you are expected to do must be specified.  As well, you cannot be asked to put something in the contract that is not in keeping with the normal duties of Teaching Assistants or Research Assistants – you are not a personal assistant.

• TA’s hired for eConcordia courses work for Concordia University, not for eConcordia, and all TAs hired for eConcordia courses are members of TRAC.

As of Fall 2011 there is absolutely no difference between TAs hired for “regular” Concordia classes and TAs hired for eConcordia classes.  All TAs are covered by the same Collective Agreement, and all TAs have exactly the same rights.

3. Put Everything on Paper

• All agreements or arrangements with your supervisor should be put on paper or in email.

In order to protect yourself, all arrangements made with your supervisor should be in writing.  Although verbal agreements are legally binding, they are very hard to prove.  So, if you make any special arrangements regarding scheduling, working conditions, details about how work is to be done, or anything else, make sure that you either receive an account of it on paper or in email, or write down an account of it on your own and email it to your supervisor.

• Keep track of the hours you work and email them to you immediate supervisor regularly.

In order to know whether you have worked all the hours in your contract you need to know how many hours you have worked.  We suggest that TAs and RAs keep track of all hours worked, including preparation time (if you review the material for a conference, attend classes, look up articles, or go over what will be presented in a lab –  it all counts as work).  Email a weekly report of those hours to your immediate supervisor, and if you like to your department: this will provide a written record of how many hours you have worked.

It may be useful to put your duties and an estimate of the hours they will require on paper before you start working.  We have prepared a form for TAs based on one from the Political Science department.

Teaching Assistant Duties and Timetable

Please note that such a document is only a guide, and should not be regarded as an enforceable part of your contract.

Questions and Complaints

If you have any questions about the Collective Agreement or complaints about how it is being applied contact TRAC at info@trac-union.ca.  Someone should be in touch with you within 24 hours.  In your message please tell us what position you were hired for, what grade (if applicable), the department that hired you (not necessarily your own), a copy of your contract if possible, and if it is a complaint a detailed description of the problem.  It is very important that you document what you do: keep emails, take notes with names, dates, and places, etc.  Most problems can be taken care of by discussion, but you do have recourse to a more formal grievance process.

By Michael Lee-Murphy
Published on November 26, 2011

For the first time in their history, McGill’s Teaching Assistants (TAs) have signed a new collective agreement without going on strike.

In a General Assembly last Thursday, the TA unit of the Association of Graduate Students Employed at McGill (AGSEM) voted overwhelmingly in favour of ratifying the contract offer in a vote of 97 to 26, or 77 per cent.

Alyssa Favreau

Of the five primary demands the union was seeking, McGill, in large part, acceded to three – a pay raise for TAs of 7.3 per cent across three years, paid training, and multiple mandatory meetings with course supervisors.

The hourly wage for TAs will increase from $24.99 this year to $25.51 in January 2012, $26.51 in 2013, and $26.83 in the final year of the contract.

In response to the union’s demand for a nine per cent wage increase across three years, McGill had initially offered 3.6 per cent across the length of the contract.

Michael Di Grappa, vice-principal (Administration & Finance), maintained that the increase in hourly wage did not amount to 7.3 per cent over three years, but was instead the original 3.6 per cent offer, in addition to “changes in the way TAs will be compensated for their paid holidays.”

Lerona Lewis, AGSEM president, said that the administration’s effort to couch a pay increase in “changes” to statutory holiday payment was a “ploy…so that it doesn’t appear that it is actually a 3 per cent increase in pay [in the contract’s first year], simply to justify that they don’t have any money.”

“The bottom line is that there was an increase… The way you present your arguments or you frame it, the University can do it to suit their agenda, but the bottom line is that we know there was an increase,” she added.

After five months of negotiations – and an initial rejected offer – the administration presented AGSEM with a second offer on November 18. The administration had previously rejected all of the TAs’ main demands, precipitating the union’s use of various pressure tactics over the last month.

Last Thursday’s ‘yes’ vote means that TAs will not strike this spring.

In addition to new mandated meetings with course supervisors and the wage increase, TAs will also have access to a three-hour paid training session, offered in September and January.

The sessions will cover the planning of effective discussions, grading in humanities and sciences, preparing lectures, and grading and feedback in French.

In the week leading up to the vote, the AGSEM executive extensively discussed one new addition to the contract: Article 22.

McGill’s version of the article read: “the hiring unit shall make every effort to maintain adequate teaching support for undergraduate courses by such means as utilizing Teaching Assistants, or the equivalent in accord with established practices.”

The administration agreed to AGSEM’s version, which changed “maintain” to “improve,” and deleted the clause regarding the “equivalent” of TAs.

The administration has refused, however, to make a commitment to increasing the number of hours TAs are able to teach, a major defeat for some AGSEM members.

Biology TA Justin Marleau spoke to The Daily immediately after voting, saying he was disappointed in the contract. “We didn’t get any commitment about the stabilization of TA hours… After we got the pay increases in the last bargaining agreement, they just cut our hours,” he said.

Dominique Jacques, an Atmospheric Sciences TA, said that, without increased hours, anything else was “very little in terms of gains.”

Article 22, for Jacques, was “complete bullcrap. It’s words that mean nothing.”

Molly Alexander, AGSEM’s advisor from the academic department of the Confédération des syndicats nationaux, said that the clause “sets [AGSEM] up for the next round” of negotiations, while acknowledging that it had no binding power.

Students may not realize it, but there’s another labour dispute brewing at McGill – one that has nothing to do with MUNACA. McGill’s teaching union, AGSEM, has been in negotiations with the administration over a new contract for TAs since March. Last Friday, after months of stonewalling, the administration presented them with a new offer. While the union’s lips are sealed until TAs vote on Thursday, The Daily hopes that they met the TAs demands, which include more TA hours, the limiting of conference and lab sizes, paid training, mandatory meetings with course supervisors, and a 3 per cent wage increase.
The administration should give the TAs what they are asking for. Many of AGSEM’s demands would benefit students academically. TAs are indispensable to an undergraduate education at McGill. Longer hours and paid training for TAs would make them more capable and available to students. That would mean more effectively run conferences, more helpful office hours, and more thoroughly graded papers.

Faculty should also hope to see the TAs’ demands met; more TA hours means a reduced marking burden on professors. Further, better trained TAs would mean the prepared course material would be more effectively taught to students.

And, of course, meeting the TAs demands would be good for the 2,000 or so TAs at McGill. TAs are graduate students, many of whom are in difficult financial circumstances, and may be incurring steep student debts. Given the difficulty of their jobs, and how well-qualified most of them are, the $24.99 an hour they make is hardly just compensation. Fully-appointed TAs are currently mandated to work 180 hours per term, and so make only about $4,500 per TA-ship. This is barely a living wage, and certainly is not reflective of the incredibly important role they play at McGill.

Indeed, TAs are an essential part of the academic structure at McGill, and, without them, the University would hardly be able to function. This was made clear in the spring of 2008 when AGSEM went on strike for over two months. As a result, grades were delayed and professors were overworked during exam time. If the administration’s conduct during the MUNACA strike is any indication, a TA strike this year would be more bitter and drawn-out than the last one.

The fact that the administration has flatly rejected the TAs demands so far, despite the obvious benefits that meeting those demands would produce, is yet another example of how out of touch the administration is with the desires of the campus community. Their callous response to the presence of violent riot police on campus, their continual support of tuition hikes, their attempts to silence MUNACA, their stripping away of student’s rights to the McGill name: these are all signs of an administration that has no interest in listening to what its students, faculty, and support staff want or need.
But last Monday’s thousand-strong teach-in in front of James Administration (in the newly christened Community Square) was a sign that the McGill community is increasingly determined to be heard. And if the administration wants to show that it is finally listening, it should begin by acceding to the modest demands of our TAs.

Originally published at: http://www.mcgilldaily.com/2011/11/support-your-tas/

12:00pm – 2:00pm
16 November 2011
Hall Building, H-110
1455 de Maisonneuve O.
Metro Guy-Concordia Map

Agenda

1. Call to Order
2. eConcordia
   2.1 Missclassification
   2.2 Equity
3. Election of Auditor
4. Other Business

eConcordia

There are many issues outstanding regarding the integration of eConcordia employees into the TRAC TA bargaining unit.  We will be providing an update, and specifically information about misclassification and pay equity issues.

Auditor

One of the two TRAC Auditors will be leaving Montreal before the end of his term, and so we will be entertaining nominations for that position.  This is a position paid by a modest honorarium. A full description of the position of Auditor is avaliable in the TRAC Constitution and Bylaws (version française: AERC Statuts et règlements intérieurs), section 12.5.

Other Business

After the regular business of the meeting, we will open the floor to other business and a question and answer period.

Please direct questions or comments to info@trac-union.ca.

If you have been trying to contacts us by email in the last few weeks, your email likely bounced.

If you tried to access our web site, you may have noticed that it has been intermittently down.

These problems have now been solved.  Our email and web site have been reconfigured, and should be secure and reliable for the foreseeable future.

We regret and apologize for any inconvenience that these outages may have caused.  Please be sure that we take our role very seriously, that we are here to help you with any employment or other issues you have, and that we have taken sufficient measures to insure that our communications going forward will be responsive, reliable, and uninterrupted.

If you require any information or wish to discuss these issues, please contact us at info@trac-union.ca.

MONTREAL – An investigation commissioned by the Quebec Ministry of Labour has concluded that McGill University is employing illegal scabs to replace some of its striking non-academic employees.

The ministry had received 57 complaints from the McGill University Non-Academic Certified Association (MUNACA), which represents more than 1,600 workers who have been on strike since Sept. 1.

An investigator was dispatched Sept. 8, and after interviews at both the downtown and Macdonald campuses, found that 15 of 110 workers replacing striking employees were not managers or otherwise eligible to replace them, and hence were doing so illegally.

(full article here)

TRAC deplores this illegal act.  We encourage all TRAC members to tell the McGill administration that the law applies equally to all, and to immediately cease using illegal labour:

Heather Monroe-Blum
Principal and Vice-Chancellor
heather.munroe.blum@mcgill.ca
(514) 398-4180

Lynne B. Gervais
Associate Vice-Principal, Human Resources
lynne.gervais@mcgill.ca
(514) 398-3228