January 24th’s planned bargaining session was canceled by the Employer as their outsourced spokesperson’s flight from Victoria to Vancouver was delayed due to weather. This is not the first time that bargaining has been delayed or canceled due the Employer’s travel woes.
To try and make up for the lost time, TSSU suggested that bargaining start later and continue past 4:30 pm. The Employer said no as their “bargaining team has lives.” Every day without cost of living increases, every day without a pension, every day without protections from increasing workloads, and every day without job security deeply affects our members’ lives.
The subsequent bargaining session on January 25 went ahead and focused on Graduate Facilitators (GFs). The only positive to take from this session is that some progress was made regarding increasing prep time for workshops. The key issues facing GFs still need to be addressed. Frustratingly the Employer is still insisting on separating Media and Maker Commons (MMC) GFs from Student Learning Commons (SLC) GFs. This separation results in MMC GFs being denied the hard-won rights that SLC GFs won in the 2019 round of bargaining.