Employer refuses to address fundamental issues faced by workers

TSSU has finished the first of two weeks of expedited bargaining with SFU, as required by the Labour Relations Board. Since our last update on Tuesday, we bargained for Teaching Assistants, Education Mentors, Graduate Facilitators in the Student Learning Commons and Media and Maker Commons, and ELC/ITP/ITA instructors. While there has been some minor movement on TSSU’s part, overall the bargaining sessions have been more of the same—lack of respect for the work TSSU members do and the financial crisis workers are facing, and any sense of urgency to solve problems. 

TSSU provided signing sheets agreeing on contract language changes for Qualifications and Seniority for ELC/ITP/ITA, and Workload Review for TAs, and withdrawing TSSU proposals on Probationary Period for ELC/ITP/ITA and the Confidential Overwork Fund for TAs. These small agreements provide incremental improvements. After an intensive week of bargaining, we were only able to come to agreements on incremental improvements

The Employer showed up with nothing to present regarding TAs, and admitted they had not reviewed TSSU’s proposals in any detail, or addressed the fundamental issues of the TSSU membership, except by restating what they are. The Employer said that any changes to mitigate the inherent power imbalance between us would not have the desired effect because the Employer can always find ways to violate any agreement. The spokesperson went on to suggest that because systems exist to deal with violations, no preventative changes are required to the systems facilitating those violations.

The Employer has said they have no intention to deal with the rising workload caused by increasing class sizes or new modes of instruction, or intention of paying people properly for the work they are already doing. They say that any of these changes would have to come out of the General Wage Increases that they have offered. This means that the cost of any changes to systems requiring the Employer to pay TSSU members for overwork created by its admitted subversion of existing systems must be borne by TSSU members.

The TSSU Contract Committee also told the Employer that their proposed cuts to International Student Health Fee coverage were concessions, and reiterated we were not going to be accepting concessions, especially to rights that members have recently fought so hard to win. The SFU Administration aims to make this coverage harder to access, to eliminate access for the first and last months of coverage, and to eliminate spousal access, among other concessions. This Employer claims that we just have a different view of what a concession is—an absurd argument—without ever providing their view of what a concession might be. We have heard the members’ message loud and clear that ISHF coverage is essential to them, and there will be no conceding any of this right. 

SFU Admin continues to propose an existing Education Mentor compensation model that has been unchanged in ten years, with Mentor base wages frozen the entire decade. Further, the Admin bargaining team wasted our time by insisting that Education Mentors do no teaching at all, and therefore could not be considered TAs. Their tactic to demean the work our members do as a rhetorical strategy in bargaining remains unchanged. Little agreement was achieved at the table because of the Employer’s unwillingness to move on these issues.

The Contract Committee again emphasized the necessity of reducing uncertainty around Graduate Facilitator contract renewals, while the Employer remained reluctant to make any guarantees of employment to our members, desiring flexibility only for themselves. They also denied flexibility to GFs for preparation time, and did not want to trust GFs to reallocate unused preparation time as they deemed fit. 

For ELC/ITP/ITA instructors, TSSU has made efforts to move towards the Employer by trying to find a workable one year planning model for employment that contains 40 teaching weeks, 4 vacation weeks of vacation, 4 accountable duty weeks, and 4 unpaid leave weeks. This would not only allow for proper planning, for both instructors and administration, but would also ensure instructors would get the real paid vacation that they are not getting now. The Employer wants commitment from instructors, and we feel that this fair compensation and workload model will ensure that instructors are able to commit.

TSSU has proposed capping the number of students in ELC/ITP/ITA classes, and providing another contact hour for every three hours of Composition classes taught as ways to control workload, to ensure proper compensation for work done, and to create job opportunities for more instructors. TSSU is also trying to limit precarity by limiting the use of “Temporary Instructors,” many of whom now are working for years straight, often full time, without the benefits or step pay increases that comes with being simply defined as a “Continuing Instructor,” to just those Instructors hired to replace Continuing Instructors temporarily.

The Employer’s proposals ask for commitment without offering any commitment in return, for flexibility without offering any flexibility in return, and, overall, for concessions and deep cuts for workers on this campus who go without financial security. Halfway through our two week mandatory bargaining period it remains clear that substantial progress at the table will be stalled by the employer’s reticence to address the key fundamental issues facing our members. Our members’ bills cannot wait and we know that urgent committed action after this period is through will be necessary to get to a fair deal.