2022/2023 Bargaining Priorities
After months of outreach, surveys and focus groups, the TSSU membership has set our bargaining priorities for 2022 in a series of themes. As a feminist union, our bargaining priorities always reflect the need to address social and economic inequities throughout. The themes are broken down into 6 key priorities as detailed below:
Cost of living
As of July 2022, the Consumer Price Index is at 8.0%. Members are struggling to keep up with the increasing costs of living and housing in the lower mainland and some cost of living allowance is needed. Increments in wages and key benefits, such as mental health and dental coverage, are needed to offset financial pressures from inflation, and housing costs, tuition, and childcare are a priority in this round of bargaining.
Graduate Student workers are in urgent need of an increase to minimum guaranteed funding, on par with general wage increases. We also want the Employer to invest in access to affordable student housing and amenities on campus so that future generations of student workers can benefit.
Addressing overwork
Across the board, compensation needs to increase as class sizes increase. Graduate Facilitators require improvement in the compensation model to ensure they receive sufficient prep time and are compensated for the increasing number of assigned administrative tasks. For Instructors, whether ELC/ITP/ITA or Sessional, the Contact Hour model needs to be updated for high workload courses such as writing and composition courses, and other workload factors, such as supervising TAs and course development. We want to eliminate TA and SI “equivalencies” when they give people less time to do the same work. Finally, TAs need a creative solution to the complex problem of having to raise workload concerns when there is a dual relationship as both a student and employee, such as a confidential overwork fund.
Security
We’ve built and protected a bridge for Sessional Instructors to limited-term faculty work, but there needs to be a mechanism to prioritise long-time instructors for continuing positions as well. For ELC/ITP/ITA instructors, some guarantee of benefits such as pension and continuous work will allow instructors to concentrate on one job and to commit to the department, knowing they will receive some reciprocal commitment from their employer. For TAs and SIs too many positions are filled as Conditional Upon Enrollment making life even more precarious; we want to reduce the number of such positions and increase the compensation for cancellation.
Remote, hybrid and blended courses
Remote, hybrid, and blended courses have brought about increased workloads for our members, necessitating a compensation model that addresses the overwork arising from these formats of instruction. Further our members need access to the technology and equipment necessary to support different formats of teaching. Where use of personal internet and or home office is required, reimbursement needs to be available.
Training, mentorship, and professional development
We want a system that ensures all workers are oriented, appropriately trained, and have mentorship and development opportunities on paid time. At the moment, members do not receive proper health and safety training, and need access to specific training on topics such as online learning, mental health/students in distress, supporting EAL students, classroom management training, and technological change. Further, GFs are yet to receive any paid professional development opportunities. Sessional instructors, whether students or long-time instructors, all need paid access to mentorship and professional development.
Strengthening our Rights
For recently added job classifications – Graduate Facilitators in Media Maker Commons and Education Mentors, we need to extend the existing Collective Agreement provisions. For accommodation requests, we want: to limit when the Employer can require doctor’s notes and when they do, have a portion of the cost reimbursed; to ensure all workers have access to basic rights under the law, such as statutory holiday, vacation time, and pay statements that make sense; to ensure that our role as academics is also supported by ensuring time off for degree related activities including academic conferences.
RA Bargaining Priorities
In this initial bargaining round our membership presented key bargaining priorities to ensure RAs have the rights and protections they need:
- include all RAs, by maintaining a broad definition that covers all types of research work at the University, so that all RAs and grant employees have access to advocacy, employment standards, WorksafeBC, and other basic protections, while also capturing the key points of the different characteristics between student RA positions and “open” RA positions;
- bring transparency by ensuring every RA and grant employee gets an outline of what’s expected of them, what pay rate they will receive, and how many hours they’re being paid. As well, to ensure jobs, outside of those going to the supervisor’s student, are posted on central website;
- protect against key inequities our members face such as bullying and harassment, intellectual property theft, wage theft that occurs for student RAs every time teaching positions go up in pay and RA positions go down by the same amount to offset costs; and have a mechanism for long-service RAs to earn priority for future appointments;
- value researchers by building a fair wage and benefit floor ensure that every RA and grant employee has a living wage and access to a base level of benefits, including employer paid MSP (international student health fee), and protections of the employment standards act, WorksafeBC, paid training and orientation, etc;
- extend existing TSSU Collective Agreement rights to RAs. This would include already existing human rights and harassment protection, health and safety protections, grievance procedures, childcare fund, intellectual property protections, tuition deferment, and more.