Originally Posted by A.Marlowe

Thanks a lot!
I have a few more questions, if you don't mind.
-Were the only people who voted undergraduate or graduate TAs? Or was voting open to all members of CUPE 3906?

Voting was only open to members of the unit #1, which means undergraduate and graduate TAs or RAs in lieu of TA. Members of Units 2 (sessional faculty) and Unit 3 (postdoctoral fellows) were not eligible to vote, unless they were also TAs (which is true for a few people).

Originally Posted by A.Marlowe

-What percentage of CUPE 3906 is undergraduates, graduates, and others?

CUPE 3906 has three units,
Unit 1 is ~2700 undergraduate and graduate TAs
Unit 2 is ~300 sessional faculty, some of whom are graduate students (and potential TAs) as well.
Unit 3 is ~130 postdoctoral fellows, some of whom may be sessional faculty as well (but definitely aren't graduate students).

So in terms of percentages, again +-5%:
Undergraduate Students: 25%
Graduate Students: 65%
Other: 10%

Originally Posted by A.Marlowe

-Where was voting held, and for how long was it open?

To maximize accessibility, we tried a unique (as far as we now) procedure where voting was held in three phases each of two days. During each phase the voting was opened at GMM in the evening (around 5PM) and then continued that night until 10PM in Wentworth House. The following day voting tables were in Mills and Thode Libraries from 10AM-5PM. The three phases were:

Aug 19-20
Sep 2-3
Sep 22-23

Notification was sent by email before each vote, and was postered on all of the CUPE bulletin boards. Unfortunately, we didn't get updated email lists for September TAs from some departments until the 23rd, so some people definitely didn't receive emails. Both sides (the University Admin and CUPE 3906) recognize the ongoing delay in getting TA lists from Departments to CUPE 3906 is a problem and we're working together to find a way to fix it. Its a problem that's been around for a long time, and it needs to be fixed.

I'm tired of people attacking TAs. Seriously. It's getting old.

Yup, I make a lot of money per hour. Do I work the number of hours I get paid for? No. I work more. And I have 2 other minimum wage part time jobs. And I go to school full time. Being a TA is not a free ride. It (almost) pays for my tuition, but not my living expenses. I have a mortgage, credit card bills, books to pay for, food, etc. Being a TA lightens the load a bit for 4 months. It doesn't mean that I sit on my ass all the time counting my precious money.

Originally Posted by Mowicz

We have one, it's called academics. :p


Seriously though, I'm in my office 9-5 or later, almost every day (with the exception of classes/tutorials etc.) doing research or just trying to wrap my head around stuff...even on some weekends. When would you expect me to work another job?


If I had to work a 2nd job because my TAship wasn't paying me enough, do you actually believe I'd make TAing a priority? Get real. You guys are making a self-fulfilling prophecy.

EDIT: And what I mean by that is:

Pay (already crappy) TAs less. =>
TAs do even less. =>
Pay (even crappier) TAs even less. =>
...

Considering the quality of TAs I've had, the only way they could do less is if they stopped showing up completely. These are the people being paid 2 - 3 times minimum wage.

Originally Posted by dsahota

With the exception of our two very dedicated and hard working staff members, everyone else in CUPE 3906 is a volunteer who was elected from the membership. We're absolutely not out to make money for the union in any way shape or form, our primary goals are to make sure our members get a fair deal and to ensure that downward slide of the quality of education at McMaster is stopped.

Derek, if that's the case, then why is CUPE proposing a $40,000 payment to the "elected local representatives"?


Item 5.08:
http://unit1bargaining.files .wordp...inal-final.pdf

Originally Posted by kleung

Derek, if that's the case, then why is CUPE proposing a $40,000 payment to the "elected local representatives"?

Item 5.08:
http://unit1bargaining.files .wordp...inal-final.pdf

Good question,

So one of our proposals is grant-in-aid, which has the effect of essentially reducing money into the union by about $100,000 per year but puts about $400,000 into the pockets of members and $430,000 into the university coffers.

The union does have costs of doing business, for example there are small stipends for committees and executives, as well as a lot of costs of actually bargaining. For example, for the 3 day marathon bargaining session this Wed-Fri, we've agreed to go offsite, which incurs hotel costs and meal costs for our bargaining team and staff. These sort of things add up, especially since we essentially now are in constant bargaining because of the three units which bargain separately. Currently the amounts are primarily covered out of union dues and with less dues, the money has to come out of somewhere.

The way the $40,000 proposed transfer (its currently $12,000 per year) works is that it goes into the revenue of the union and then the disbursement of the money is decided through the budget process by the membership. $40,000 is the low end estimate of what it actually currently costs the Union to operate its executive and bargaining teams. In our initial package (which is still the current package) we've essentially asked the University to cover the majority of these costs. The increase is money is <strong>not</strong> to increase stipends or anything, its just to cover off the current cost of bargaining and running the volunteer portion of the union. The practice of covering the costs of bargaining and union volunteers is common at Universities across Ontario with numbers in the tens of thousands being common. Similarly, for the support staff (CAW) at the University, the University continues to pay the salaries of a set number of employees who get elected to work full time for the union.

So I guess the short answer to your question is a clarification. The executives and team members are all volunteer, but some positions have a small stipend attached to them.

Originally Posted by dsahota

For example, for the 3 day marathon bargaining session this Wed-Fri, we've agreed to go offsite, which incurs hotel costs and meal costs for our bargaining team and staff.

Are you kidding me? And you come here to try and get student support? Go whine about your measly $40/hour in your buddy's basement.

Get over yourself.

Originally Posted by DavidR

Are you kidding me? And you come here to try and get student support? Go whine about your measly $40/hour in your buddy's basement.

Get over yourself.

We incur hotel costs because the teams are sequestered using the hotel conference rooms to bargain in. I'd much rather go home (which is just down the street from the hotel and costs $0) for a shower, but the request is for both teams to stay on site for the entire duration and bargain non-stop through the nights. In the last round we were able to find room on campus, so it was free and we could just use the gym to shower as needed, but during the school year, there just aren't rooms available for a 72 hour block straight (The University Administration tried to book rooms and couldn't). The request to go offsite was the from the University Team, (they always request to go offsite and we always try to stay on-site), hence why we try to get them to cover the costs of doing such things by asking for transfers of funds. Obviously as an initial proposal, we try to get them to cover as much of the real costs as reasonable.

As a side note, rooms are being shared and every effort was made to minimize costs. But as you can imagine, it still adds up :(.

5 Rooms x $150/night x 3 nights is only $2250.

While hotels may be one of the expenditures, I'm not convinced that this explains the proposed increase from $12000 to $40000.

The language in the proposed contract also explicitly states that the money is going to the local elected representatives. If this is a general transfer, then why is it seperate?

Also, while we're at it, can you explain why CUPE is only proposing a 1 year agreement?

If bargaining is such an expensive process shouldn't you be trying to get a 3 year agreement like the previous one?

Originally Posted by DannyV

Considering the quality of TAs I've had, the only way they could do less is if they stopped showing up completely. These are the people being paid 2 - 3 times minimum wage.

With all due respect, you are an engineer...upwards of half of the undergrad engineers don't even attend their tutorials, so why would you expect a graduate engineer to give half a crap about running them? That's a pretty bad sampling of the TA population.


-----------------------


In all honesty, I'm a bit tired of all this TA bashing too. No, I'm not going to do less work or show less passion for the work, but it does make me wonder why I bother, a little bit. Seriously, are all undergrads as ungrateful as you guys?

-If not, then you might want to ask yourselves if there's a problem with that...
-If so, then why do I bother? Honestly, give me a reason why TAs dealing with a bunch of students with your attitudes should care in the slightest whether you succeed or fail.


And in either case...you should ask yourself if you can, and would do better.

Originally Posted by kleung

5 Rooms x $150/night x 3 nights is only $2250.

While hotels may be one of the expenditures, I'm not convinced that this explains the proposed increase from $12000 to $40000.

The language in the proposed contract also explicitly states that the money is going to the local elected representatives. If this is a general transfer, then why is it seperate?

Also, while we're at it, can you explain why CUPE is only proposing a 1 year agreement?

If bargaining is such an expensive process shouldn't you be trying to get a 3 year agreement like the previous one?

The $2250 (which is actually pretty much close to the mark for what's been budgeted) is just one example of an expense that occurs during bargaining.

The proposed increase from $12,000 to $40,000 is not due to any increase in costs. Rather $40,000 captures the real cost of doing things now. Because grant-in-aid reduces union dues by $100,000 (so that's money no longer coming into the union), we have to come up with a way fund the realistic expenses of operating the union. So one way we've proposed to do this is through increasing this transfer by quite a significant amount. The $28,000 increase is an effort to cover off a $100,000 reduction in dues. Obviously we also have to work hard to be more efficient as well because that's only a fraction of the reduced dues. Another advantage to members is that this money comes directly from the University rather than coming form members in the form of dues.

You are correct that the wording in the proposed contract does restrict the money to being distributed amongst elected representatives. Again this is not final language and so its very much subject to change.

The term of the agreement is often one of the last things agreed to. Generally speaking we open by proposing a 1-year agreement and the university proposes a 3 year. When we get down to bargaining the details of the new money in the package, the term will likely be subject to change. Our last contract was a 3 year contract as you mentioned. One of the key reasons we're still at a 1-year framework from our side is that the issue of tuition increases remains unresolved. If the University is going to raise grad tuition by another 8% next year, we don't want to have already agreed to a 3-year term in a contract where we're bargaining items assuming that tuition is not increasing by the 8% / year.

The year-round bargaining occurs because it typically takes about 9 months to bargaining a contract, and the average length is a little over 2 years, and we now have 3 contracts. So if those negotiations all happen consecutively, we're always in bargaining.

Originally Posted by Mowicz

With all due respect, you are an engineer...upwards of half of the undergrad engineers don't even attend their tutorials, so why would you expect a graduate engineer to give half a crap about running them? That's a pretty bad sampling of the TA population.


-----------------------


In all honesty, I'm a bit tired of all this TA bashing too. No, I'm not going to do less work or show less passion for the work, but it does make me wonder why I bother, a little bit. Seriously, are all undergrads as ungrateful as you guys?

-If not, then you might want to ask yourselves if there's a problem with that...
-If so, then why do I bother? Honestly, give me a reason why TAs dealing with a bunch of students with your attitudes should care in the slightest whether you succeed or fail.


And in either case...you should ask yourself if you can, and would do better.

I'm not going to bring up the other, non-engineering (and non-commerce) courses which I have taken and which are incorporated into my opinion of TAs.

I'm not asking TAs to care whether I succeed or fail. They're not being paid for that. I do expect them to be prepared, to know HOW they're going to present the material. Considering the amount they get paid, I don't see that as asking for too much.

Originally Posted by Mowicz

-If so, then why do I bother? Honestly, give me a reason why TAs dealing with a bunch of students with your attitudes should care in the slightest whether you succeed or fail.

because you're being paid(with benefits nonetheless) when some of us can't even find jobs

One of the points being made a lot is that there aren't many good TAs out there. I think one of the issues perpetuating this is that all grad students automatically get to TA. It is what most of them use to pay off their tuition, and the University has to offer them all a certain number of TAing hours. Considering most people get accepted to grad programs for their smarts/research, there is absolutely no screening for who would be a good teacher.

All of the good TAs I've had so far in University were Undergraduate students. Prof's don't have to hire any of them, so they get selected out of a pool of applicants, and generally prof's hire the ones who are more skilled towards teaching.

I don't understand why some people are making blanketed statements against all TAs...when a) you don't know who is actually supporting this - just because you are a TA doesn't mean you want a strike and b) a lot of the Unit 1 TAs are undergraduates who are going to be in the same position as you if this does happen

And just to clarify...I'm not saying all grad students are inherently bad TAs...there are many good ones out there...but for every good one there is a significant number of poor ones because they all automatically get TA positions.

Originally Posted by McIntyre

One of the points being made a lot is that there aren't many good TAs out there. I think one of the issues perpetuating this is that all grad students automatically get to TA. It is what most of them use to pay off their tuition, and the University has to offer them all a certain number of TAing hours. Considering most people get accepted to grad programs for their smarts/research, there is absolutely no screening for who would be a good teacher.

Just a quick note, many grad students are offered guaranteed TAs as part of their package, but not all. There are about 3300 graduate students at McMaster, and approximately 2000 graduate TAs. Some of this difference is due to professional master's programs (like MBA or MEng for example) where grad students are often not TAs. But there's also lots of research students (MASc or MSc or MA) who are also not TAs.

I do definitely agree though that there's minimal consideration of teaching ability when accepting graduate students, and that may be something the University really needs to think about. Another alternative is to offer some significant amount of training and preparation for incoming graduate students who may have no teaching experience, to get them up to speed. I think most TAs would really be interested if more training were made available before the semester starts, and especially relevant training specific to various disciplines and even courses. The couple hours of general training at TA/Graduate Student Day really is just a drop in the bucket.

Completely agreed! But I think there would still be a significant percentage of those that still just aren't good TAs - whether it's because of their own lack of interest in teaching or because their inherent skills just aren't suited towards that type of environment. As a lot of us have seen with profs - some can be phenomenal researchers and just be HORRIBLE in class.

I definitely think more resources need to be offered for our TAs in term of training though. I don't completely understand the need for benefits through CUPE at McMaster though when the MSU and the GSA both have decent plans.