We met again with the Employer this week: as per the LRB agreement, the 8th was the last date for them to submit their monetary proposals. Despite the rapid rates of inflation leaving most of our members unable to afford the basic necessities of living, SFU could not even bother to put forward an offer which addressed inflation, or the realities its employees face. Worse, they proposed further concessions which would worsen the financial standing of our members, including:
- eliminating the scholarship portion of pay for graduate student TAs resulting in less take-home pay, and
- cutting the group enrollment coverage for MSP / International Student Health Fee (ISHF), which would cost affected members hundreds of dollars per year.
All and any wage increases must be made within the context of increasing graduate guaranteed funding rates, to prevent the Employer from being able to fund those increases from within the same sized envelope.
Instead of percentage increases, TSSU has proposed real dollar wage increases to avoid widening the pay gap among the membership, for example between Master’s and PhD students. The TSSU proposal of over $6.00/hr. increase over three years from 2022-2024, with other monetary increases linked to the BC CPI inflation rates for 2023 and 2024, provides necessary improvements without widening that gap.
TSSU is also proposing redress of the TA base wage rate to $1200 before applying the above increases, a similar scholarship redress and tuition offset, entry into a pension plan for Instructors, a minimum of 6% vacation pay and corresponding vacation time, improvements to extended health and dental benefits and maternity and parental leave, professional development for Instructors, and payment of all retroactive money of within one month of ratification. All TSSU demands arise from the needs members have expressed through surveys, and are based squarely on the realities within which we all live.
The Administration’s offers for total general wage increases in years 2022, 2023, & 2024 of 3.24%, 6.75%, and a maximum of 3% respectively, would not match inflation while exacerbating the wage gaps. Further, it has proposed that all benefit or workload improvements would need to be found from within those percentage increases. For the past two years, the annualized rate of inflation was 3.4% and 6.9% respectively. This means, in real terms, this employer is offering us a wage cut. Funding improvements in the Collective Agreement to address overwork, rising class sizes, or blended/hybrid learning from those increases would further deepen that cut, making the paltry wage increases they offered even lower.
Further, the Employer has proposed eliminating the scholarship portion of the wage for TAs by folding it into wages, based on some dubious tax advice they received from their consultants. Although they argue that the current practice of paying TAs a scholarship amount on top of their wages is illegal under tax law, this is patently false. This proposal would reduce the total tax refunds members get, furthering our financial precarity, because the current scholarship amounts would become taxable income.
The Employer included no discussion of increases to guaranteed funding rates, so any increases in wages could easily be clawed back through lower funding in non-TA appointments, as is the practice in many departments. Also, nothing prevents SFU from increasing tuition to claw back any wage increases the Employer offers. Simply put, this is an unacceptable and insulting offer.
As if their monetary offer were not insulting enough, the Employer has proposed concessions to how the ISHF is administered, making it far more difficult to access. Both the first and last month of most semesters wouldn’t be covered, costing most members $150 / semester, and some much more. In addition, members could only apply with a “complete” application including proof of MSP enrollment. This would open up pathways for the employer to call applications “incomplete” and deny coverage for newly arrived international students because it takes months for the necessary confirmation to arrive via mail. Finally, they would also cut coverage for members who have another position with pay in-lieu of benefits (such as an RA position). By our estimation, the combined effect of all of these changes on average would cut the number of people covered by half, all to increase surpluses of hundreds of thousands of dollars at the expense of international student members who are already struggling with high rents and low pay.
Taken together, these last few days of bargaining illustrate how illusory the Employer’s commitment to getting to a fair Collective Agreement really is and how little they think of us. The only way to push back against such treatment is to display our collective power to show the employer that we will not tolerate such treatment. Get in touch with your stewards or the organizers to learn how to get involved.