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McMaster TAs and RAs request "no board" report: Expected Deadline on or around Oct 30

 
Old 10-07-2009 at 06:28 PM   #1
dsahota
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McMaster TAs and RAs request "no board" report: Expected Deadline on or around Oct 30
Dear members of the Macinsiders Community,

Since the McMaster University administration refused to take advantage of the efforts of a provincially appointed conciliator on September 30th, the CUPE 3906 Unit #1 membership has directed the bargaining team to ask the conciliator for a “no board” report at 5:00 pm on 7 Oct. 2009. The administration continues to cling to the concessionary package that it has not changed constructively in over two months of bargaining.

Key outstanding issues include:
-overwork and over-crowded classrooms
-protections against the erosion of take-home pay (following an 8% increase in graduate tuition and 4% increase in undergraduate tuition , with further increases looming)
-access to meaningful benefits
-improvements to quality education through an improved hiring and appointments process.

You can read more about these issues on our blog here:
http://unit1bargaining.wordp ress.c...-simple-terms/

The union's bargaining team is hopeful that the presence of the mediator and a strike/lockout deadline will convince the administration to spend the six scheduled sessions of negotiation working on a deal that the CUPE 3906 bargaining team is prepared to recommend to the membership.

We understand that the potential of a strike/lockout can be upsetting to the community, but the CUPE 3906 bargaining team strongly feels that a deadline is the only way a deal can get done. We encourage everyone to get informed about the bargaining process by following along on our blog at: http://unit1bargaining.wordp ress.com. As a community, we need to send the message to the University Administration to get back the bargaining table so the two sides can bargain a fair collective agreement and avert the possibility of a labour disruption.

Sincerely,

The CUPE 3906 Bargaining Team

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Old 10-07-2009 at 07:01 PM   #2
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Strike?
I could never live with myself if I knew I was partially responsible for 25,000 students losing $5000-$6000 each and a year of their life.

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Old 10-07-2009 at 07:13 PM   #3
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I am pretty sure no one is this situation cares too much about students losing money and a whole year. University doesn't want to spend anymore on TA's and TA's think they deserve more. Being a TA is an optional job, nobody forces you to take it. If you don't like the pay, the job or the hours make room for people who will be happy with the current agreement. Many I've had are seriously underqualified anyways, or maybe just lazy. But I really hope both sides can come to a fair agreement before students have to pay for this mess!

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Old 10-07-2009 at 07:28 PM   #4
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Couple of points:

We certainly don't want to see undergraduate students lose a whole year or have extra financial difficulties either. TAs are students too and certainly understand the difficulties of getting an undergraduate education. To the best of our knowledge, there's never been a TA strike in Canada where students ended up losing a whole year. In the worst case scenario, the year gets rearranged a bit and the semester might be extended. But that sort of arrangement is the exception, its much more common that the dispute is resolved reasonably quickly. A key consideration in requesting a no-board at this point of the year is to ensure that, in the worst case scenario that a labour disruption does occur, the sides can still get back to the table and get a deal and then the school year can continue as normal.

The real aim of setting a deadline though is to get the sides back to the table now and to get a deal before we even get to the deadline. We know the University Administration has the ability to address a lot of the issues we've brought up, we know they can offer a fair collective agreement, but they need the impetus to do it. After they refused to come to the table with us on September 30th, it became pretty clear that they were not ready to bargain without a deadline in place.

For graduate TAs, the offer of TA is actually part of the agreement for attending graduate school and comprises a significant portion of the funding we get while doing a Master's or Ph.D. Its much less of an option and much more of a way to actually afford to continue on in our education.

Our team absolutely supports a qualifications based hiring process and its actually something the University Administration has chosen not to implement here. We certainly always want to see the best qualified TAs in classrooms, as that's what will lead to the best education for undergraduates. We've actually proposed a system where TA jobs would be posted and then the best candidate selected, unfortunately the McMaster Administration doesn't want to implement this sort of common sense, qualifications based system.

P.S. I too absolutely hope that we can get a fair agreement without having a labour disruption.

Last edited by dsahota : 10-07-2009 at 07:32 PM.

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Old 10-07-2009 at 08:03 PM   #5
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I understand the issue from both sides but I just want to say that if there is a strike I plan to Velcro myself to the highest official on each team. I will take turns. One day CUPE, one day McMaster's bargaining team head.

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Old 10-07-2009 at 09:26 PM   #6
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Anything related to education (whether it's Elementary, Secondary, or Post-Secondary) should be considered an essential service and therefore strikes wouldn't be allowed.

The rights of 20,000 students trump all else in this case. End of story. If the union is willing to go on strike and disrupt classes/potentially ruin a year for 20,000 people, then they are anti-student. Period.
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Old 10-07-2009 at 09:31 PM   #7
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jo87 View Post
I am pretty sure no one is this situation cares too much about students losing money and a whole year. University doesn't want to spend anymore on TA's and TA's think they deserve more. Being a TA is an optional job, nobody forces you to take it. If you don't like the pay, the job or the hours make room for people who will be happy with the current agreement. Many I've had are seriously underqualified anyways, or maybe just lazy. But I really hope both sides can come to a fair agreement before students have to pay for this mess!
I'd just like to point out that not all TAs feel as though a strike is necessary. It's kind of annoying to be lumped in with something that I don't agree with. You're right, being a TA is an optional job. All jobs are optional.

If you have "underqualified" or "lazy" TAs, speak up about it. If you don't, they'll just get hired over again.

The whole thing is pretty silly IMO. I just want to get this year out of the way and get the hell away from Mac.
Old 10-07-2009 at 09:35 PM   #8
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Quote:
Originally Posted by dsahota View Post
Couple of points:

To the best of our knowledge, there's never been a TA strike in Canada where students ended up losing a whole year. In the worst case scenario, the year gets rearranged a bit and the semester might be extended.
Students can't afford to lose any part of the summer. ANY scenario where students are disrupted is not worth anything that you OR the university might gain. If the union goes on strike, then they should be liable for any lost classes students might face. We're talking $25 per lecture per student.

The same goes for the university. If they were to lock the workers out, then the university should be liable just the same.

I hope the union bosses are willing to pay up.

PS: for any TA's who might be reading this, if the union does strike, and you don't agree with the situation (especially if you're against potentially disrupting classes), then PLEASE don't picket. Don't feel obligated to support something you don't want to be a part of! It's bad enough that you're forced to pay dues!
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Last edited by Taunton : 10-07-2009 at 09:44 PM.

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Old 10-07-2009 at 10:11 PM   #9
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Quote:
Originally Posted by michelle View Post
I'd just like to point out that not all TAs feel as though a strike is necessary. It's kind of annoying to be lumped in with something that I don't agree with. You're right, being a TA is an optional job. All jobs are optional.

If you have "underqualified" or "lazy" TAs, speak up about it. If you don't, they'll just get hired over again.

The whole thing is pretty silly IMO. I just want to get this year out of the way and get the hell away from Mac.
Just wondering, who would we address our complaints to? I've gone to review sessions where I go out of my way and my friends commute for help and the TA looks at the questions for the FIRST TIME during the hour period, and goes over 4-5 of the BASIC questions. When I ask a questions I don't understand after the session is over, they still cannot answer it. It happened once, okay I assume that the TA will learn. I just went to the review session for the second test, same TA, same problem. Considering that this is a graduate TA, I expect help because it is the subject they are studying in and it's pretty basic info (I could probably do this if I remembered what I learned in first year).
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Old 10-07-2009 at 10:17 PM   #10
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Go to your professor. Complain to the department. Go to anyone that will listen. Bad TAs keep getting hired because no one says anything. Simply filling out the evaluation at the end of the term isn't enough.

As for not picketing, I don't believe I get paid if I don't picket and/or facilitate the picketing. As much as I may not support the strike, I have bills to pay. Eating might be nice every once in awhile too.
Old 10-07-2009 at 10:21 PM   #11
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Quote:
Originally Posted by michelle View Post

As for not picketing, I don't believe I get paid if I don't picket and/or facilitate the picketing. As much as I may not support the strike, I have bills to pay. Eating might be nice every once in awhile too.
No, you won't get paid. But strike pay isn't anything you can live off of either. Perhaps get another job in the meantime?
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Old 10-07-2009 at 10:25 PM   #12
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Taunton View Post
Anything related to education (whether it's Elementary, Secondary, or Post-Secondary) should be considered an essential service and therefore strikes wouldn't be allowed.
Generally speaking employer's are really against things being declared essential services as this means all disputes essentially end up in arbitration. Arbitrated settlements on average come out better for the workers than negotiated ones, so it'd actually cost the University Administration a lot more if everything were an essential service.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Taunton
Students can't afford to lose any part of the summer. ANY scenario where students are disrupted is not worth anything that you OR the university might gain. If the union goes on strike, then they should be liable for any lost classes students might face. We're talking $25 per lecture per student.
We certainly don't want to see students lose part of their summer either as we know that's how students earn the money to pay for their education. However, we also don't want to see McMaster continue to slide downwards in terms of quality of education and ability to attract good students. We've already seen plans for next year for more cuts to courses and conglomeration of moderately sized lower division classes into enormous classes. We know this isn't the model for a good education and we want to see McMaster be the best institution it can be. Our negotiations aren't just about TAs gaining, in fact, at the moment we're working just to get back to the current level of support for TAs. One of the huge issues we're tackling in this bargaining round is what we see as the declining quality, and thus the declining value, of a McMaster education. Larger class sizes, less time to mark and grade assignments and less contact with educators affects the whole McMaster community and I absolutely believe its worth trying to prevent.

Last edited by dsahota : 10-07-2009 at 10:35 PM. Reason: spelling mistake

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Old 10-07-2009 at 10:27 PM   #13
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Taunton View Post
No, you won't get paid. But strike pay isn't anything you can live off of either. Perhaps get another job in the meantime?
Really? Come on, now.
Old 10-07-2009 at 10:32 PM   #14
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Quote:
Originally Posted by michelle View Post
As for not picketing, I don't believe I get paid if I don't picket and/or facilitate the picketing. As much as I may not support the strike, I have bills to pay. Eating might be nice every once in awhile too.
In the event of a strike/lockout, strike pay is $10 / hour for 20 hours a week. That works out to about $850-900 / month, which is comparable to the pay as a Graduate TAs and likely an increase in total pay for undergraduate TAs, but you do have to put in more hours. For those people who can't picket or would like to request other duties, there's lots of other work that would need to be done such as preparing food for people on the lines, doing research, answering phones, etc.

Picketing or performing alternate duties are always at the discretion of the member, we don't force anyone to picket. We also understand that members have academic duties in their roles as students to attend to on campus and certainly believe they should be able to continue to work in their labs, attend classes, or do their research in the event of a TA strike/lockout. For more elaborate explanations check out our blog post:

http://unit1bargaining.wordp ress.c...t-of-a-strike/

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Old 10-07-2009 at 10:44 PM   #15
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Taunton View Post
No, you won't get paid. But strike pay isn't anything you can live off of either. Perhaps get another job in the meantime?

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