Tentative Agreement Reached – Ratification Vote Now!

After a very hectic week, last night the TSSU general membership voted to send the tentative agreement that settles bargaining for TAs, TMs, SIs, GFs and ELC/ITP instructors to an online ratification vote. The vote will take place from March 27th (TODAY!) to March 30th. Members will receive a voting token sometime today, and if you do not by midday on Saturday, please check your mail filters, and then let the Trustees know at trustees@tssu.ca.

The Contract Committee has emailed a package, including both summary and all signing sheets. If you did not receive it please email tssu@tssu.ca. This agreement does not cover RAs, who will commence bargaining sometime in the near future.

These improvements were secured during our regular bargaining sessions over ~13 months, but also, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, over an extraordinary accelerated bargaining process in late March 2020. Through the hard work of the Contract Committee, we were able to secure a tentative agreement on March 25, 2020, that includes all of the listed improvements. If not noted in the summary in the package, the language in the Collective Agreement likely features minimal changes or will remain the same as it currently is written. This is a tentative agreement and still requires ratification by the TSSU general membership and the SFU Board of Governors.

Despite the employer’s repeated attempts to take away rights such as sessional seniority from our Collective Agreement, we have maintained all of our rights and built upon them. We also achieved several processes through which we can negotiate with SFU after the ratification of the agreement and before we bargain our next agreement. This means we can achieve more improvements once the dust settles from this crisis, but we will need to be organized and prepared to pressure the SFU Administration to achieve those gains