Graduate teaching assistants on strike
The members of the Association of Graduate Students Employed at McGill (AGSEM, the teaching assistants' union) have given the mandate to their coordinating committee to launch a strike as of noon today, April 24, 2003. This strike was decided by 144 members out of a possibility of over 800 members in the bargaining unit. Only 188 members of the teaching assistants' (TA) union participated in the vote.
Negotiations between the University and the TA union have been ongoing since December 2001 and were recently subject to conciliation. The University has offered to raise remuneration by 17% on average, but the union has been inflexible with its demands which are valued at 37%.
Highlights of McGill University's offer to the teaching assistants (TAs) are provided below.
Salary and Vacation Pay
Under the University's proposal, McGill's TAs would have benefited from the highest salary rates for TAs in the province, a province whose tuition rates are among the lowest in Canada.
Current salary rates for TAs vary within different faculties and range from $14.50 to $18.49 per hour. The University is offering to narrow the differences in wages paid to TAs across the faculties from the current $3.99 to $.072 an hour and to increase hourly rates to $19.49, for the lowest paid, and to $20.21 for the highest paid, including vacation pay, by the end of the collective agreement (2006). Retroactive payments would also be provided.
The union is demanding a thirty-seven percent (37%) in wages and vacation benefits by 2004.
Guaranteed levels of funding
The University has indicated that it would be willing to encourage departments not to reduce other financial support available for graduate student support as the TA earnings increase.
The University has also stated that any retroactivity paid to TAs for 2002 and 2003 will not be deducted from other sources of funding.
Graders
Graders have always been employed at the University to correct mid-terms and final exams. When the Union was formed it did not seek to represent graders. The University has, nonetheless, offered to specify that any TA given extra grading work in a class for which they are already a TA will be remunerated at TA rates.
Overtime
The University's position is that extra hours worked by a TA should be paid at the regular salary rate and that the professor responsible for the course should approve these extra hours.
Priority Pool
The University believes that preference for hiring from the priority pool should be given to students from Ph.D. 1, 2, 3, 4 and Masters 1, 2. The University is committed to doing everything possible to reduce the time to completion of PhD studies and at the same time to assist students earlier in their graduate student careers. McGill therefore opposes extending priority pool preference to students in their fifth year of a PhD
Grievances
In line with other collective agreements, the current contract specifies that grievances must be filed "within twenty (20) working days following knowledge of the occurrence giving rise to the grievance but not longer than six (6) months following the occurrence of the fact." To extend the time period for filing grievances is unrealistic given that TA employment is for periods of fifteen (15) weeks. Problems must be addressed prior to the end of employment.
