Teaching Support Staff Union – SFU

The elections for the following positions will be held on November 10th and 12th: Trustee I, Organizer, Coordinator, Secretary, Communications Commissioner, and Education Commissioner. The following nominations have been recieived

Li Chen, Trustee I
Amalia Dray, Trustee I
Karina Nilsoon, Trustee I
Karan Durairajuan, Organizer
Jen Scott, Organizer
Soizic Wadge, Coordinator
Emily Gordon, Secretary
Jordan Barnes, Communications Commissioner
Wyatt Skovron, Education Commissioner

The candidates below have supplied the following statements:

TRUSTEE I, LI CHEN: I am second-year Ph.D. student from School of Communication at Simon Fraser University. I am writing to apply for the position in the TSSU. I wish to contribute to the TSSU and the SFU community with my passion and skills.
My motivations to apply for this position are two-fold. First, being a member of TSSU and enjoying the benefits from the union, I also wish to make my contributions. Since, I joined in TSSU last year, I have been extremely grateful to it for helping securing TA’s wages and healthcare benefits. This is ezpecially true after a financial crisis when the university has experienced budget cuts. I wish to assist to the TSSU to protect the teaching assistants’ interests and improve their working conditions. Second, as a communications major, I also wish to help improve the mutual communication between TSSU and it’s members. On the one hand, I beleive it is important for the members to be aware of the TSSU’s efforts in improving their working conditions. On the other hand, it is also important for TSSY to engage its members in a larger sense in order to know to improve their services. This year, I notice that several surveys have been sent out to collect the opinions of its members for ways to improve the service. For work like this, I sincerely wish to contribute my knowledge.
Apart from my passions, I also consider myself as a qualified candidate, My past working experience in a consulting agency in CHina prepared me the necessary skills to collaborate with members in the team. The nature of solution-oriented deadline-driven consulting work also helped me gain the ability to deal with complex issues and work under pressure. In addition, my master studies at Ohio University also helped me gain experiences in multicultural contexts. The relevant experience in Ohio include assisting the school’s Associate Director on developing strategies to retain undergraduate students; conducting surveys to collect the opinions for ways to improve the gradute program; helping prepare regional academic conference. Those community services not only equipped me with a sense of responsibility, but also enhances my ability to socialize with a range of people from different backgrounds.
In shot, I believe I can do a good job with my sense of responsibility, enthusiasm and skills. I would like to work for TSSU and make my contributions to all TSSU members. Thanks for considering my application. I look forward to hearing from you soon.

TRUSTEE I, AMALIA DRAY: My name is Amalia Dray and I am running for the position of Trustee. I show up at the GMs as “Mali from Linguistics” or “the Other Molly”. I’ve been a TA and an active member of the TSSU in every semester since I arrived at SFU in 2007. This is my 4th semester as Steward for the Linguistics Department, and my first semester as Steward for the Language Training Institute. I was an inaugural member of the TSSU’s Social Justice Committee, and this semester I’m acting as its Chair.
So why will I be an excellent Trustee? Well, I’m a language nerd by instinct and by training. I have an eye for clarity in the written word, and an ear for ambiguity – distilling clarity from ambiguity is what interpreting our Collective Agreement is all about, and it’s what I do best. Before I arrived at SFU I was the Data Integrity Coordinator for the Shoah Foundation archive, so I’ve had a lot of experience in imposing order onto chaos, and overseeing the complex workings of an organization that needs to run smoothly and fairly in order to improve the lives of its members.
There you have it: dedication to the Union and its mission, and the neatly matching skill sets to help us further our mission in my role as Trustee. Coming into a bargaining year, communication between members is crucial, and the language of our Collective Agreement must be exquisitely clear. Vote for the language nerd!

TRUSTEE I, CARINA NILSSON: I believe that I, Carina Nilsson, would be very successful at holding the position of TSSU Trustee I. Currently I am an M.A. Student within the Department of History; I hold the HGSA Chair position; work as a TSSU member as a Teaching Assistant; work as a Research Assistant within the Centre for the Comparative Study of Muslim Societies and Cultures; and I am also raising my three and a half year old daughter, and my five month old son.
There is no doubt that a great deal of organization, focus, and determination is needed in order to achieve the goals I have set for myself, and to accomplish the jobs that I have taken on. Being an informed member of the TSSU is important to me, as well as the assurance that proper procedures are being followed at the GM’s (and in other particulars) I will be expected to attend, participate in, and report on.
I do hope that I will be able to sit as the TSSU’s Trustee I. I appreciate your time and consideration.

ORGANIZER, JEN SCOTT: I am 4th-year PhD student working in the Department of English. I have been involved with the TSSU since arriving as a master’s student in the Fall of 2005, when the last round of bargaining was in its final stages.
I was one of two departmental stewards in the English department for 2 years; I was the secretary on the Executive committee for nearly two years; and I have, at various times, sat on the communications, internal relations, education, and social justice committees.I am currently on the social justice and communications committees.
Prior to arriving at SFU and becoming a TSSU member, I was actively involved with the Canadian Auto Worker’s Union (CAW) local 2002 for eight years, where I acted as a department vice-chair (the equivalent of a steward), the health and safety representative, as well as the Western Region Women’s Committee representative. With the CAW, I have had experience participating in national and local campaigns, as well as having received formal grievance handling training, stewardship training, and participated in national and local bargaining campaigns.
I will bring a breadth of experience to the position of organizer as well as a deep commitment to union activism and the knowledge that this year, a bargaining year, will be a crucial one for the TSSU. I am committed to representing our membership throughout the bargaining process.

COORDINATOR, SOIZIC WADGE: Since arriving at SFU in the Fall of 2006 I have been involved with the TSSU as a departmental steward, sat on various committees, and was the communications commissioner in the fall of 2008.
Most recently I was elected coordinator in the Spring of 2009, and have thoroughly enjoyed my time with the TSSU and I look forward to continuing my position through the coming year. In my time as coordinator I have gained invaluable experience that will be of great use for the upcoming bargaining year. I am committed to representing the interests of TSSU members to the university and the greater community. The coming year will poses many challenges not only to the TSSU but the public sector at large and I look forward to taking on this challenge.

SECRETARY, EMILY GORDON: I have been the secretary since April and am enjoying both the organizational work and being involved in the larger decisions of the TSSU. Since I began, I have been realizing several things. First, that I really enjoy taking minutes and organizing, and second, that the secretary position can be much more than simply taking and filing minutes. The secretary position is much more about keeping the union accountable and ensuring that we know what we have discussed that we can talk about new topics of importance, rather than reiterating a topic we have already made a decision on. Past minutes also useful for learning our union’s past precedent and regaining wonderful ideas past executive members had. In the future, my intention is to keep ensuring that our union is accountable and that we work effectively.

JORDAN BARNES, COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSIONER: I started working as the communications commissioner just prior to the Summer semester. It was a bit difficult getting into the role at first, but I believe it started to come together pretty quickly. I’ve enjoyed working with the other committee members and feel like I make appropriate contributions to both the strategies and mediums of the committee. I have a significant amount of experience managing websites and appropriately, I believe I have good communication skills. In the final analysis, I have confidence in my ability to organize the affairs of the communications committee and I trust that my record serves as evidence to this effect.

WYATT SKOVRON, EDUCATION COMMISSIONER: As an active member of the TSSU since I arrived at SFU in September of 2008, I have gained an understanding and appreciation of the importance of the Union in representing TAs, TMs, and Sessional Instructors within an academic environment where their professional contributions and dedication is often under appreciated. I was lucky enough to serve as the Steward for the History Department from September 2008 to September 2009. This position led to my regular involvement in Union events and decision-making processes. In addition to regularly attending General and Stewards’ Meetings, I also volunteered to serve on the Education Committee starting in early 2009. In the early Summer of 2009, I volunteered to take on the vacant commissioner’s position for the Education Committee, and since taking over, the Committee has grown in size to approximately ten members and had met regularly throughout the summer semester, with the meetings culminating in the production of a pamphlet designed especially for science students that explained the importance of the TSSU from a discipline-specific perspective.
The Education committee can play a part in bargaining by making members more aware of the purposes served by the TSSU. This is especially important in Sciences, where participation in the TSSU is traditionally lower, as well as the Surrey and Harbour Centre campuses, where TSSU members may feel less represented due to the distance between them and the main TSSU offices. The Education Committee has already acknowledged the importance of appealing to these groups, and has already designed the Science Pamphlet. We are also in the process of devising strategies to increase the visibility of the TSSU at Surrey and Harbour Centre.
I look forward to continuing my service as commissioner, as the Education Committee can potentially play a large role in mobilizing TSSU members and the campus in general in preparation of bargaining. The key to successfully bargaining is to raise awareness and participation from normally non-active or apathetic members, and the Education Committee can play a central role in that mobilization. I am excited at the prospect of being a part of an important and exciting period both for TSSU members and SFU.

What is a GM and why is it so Important?

A General Membership meeting is a place for TSSU members to gather for discussion, debate and decision-making about the work we do and our position as a union in relation to larger socio-political and economic labour issues.

Everybody who has held a TSSU appointment in the last year is a general member. The General Membership is the final decision making body of our union. We try to gather as many members as possible to ensure that all voices are heard and that our decisions reflect as many members as possible.

The union functions in large part through the work of its staff, elected officials and committee members, but at the end of the day each of these bodies respond to the general membership and take direction from the general membership as well. This non-hierarchical structure has a history of over thirty years and is an essential component of who we are and where we stand in the broader labour context. Historically, we emerge from an intersection of feminism and trade unionism, where traditional trade unionism was not addressing hierarchies (particularly, but not exclusively, gender based) within their own structures. The feminist non-hierarchical foundation of our structure attempts to create a union that is opposed to status differentials and empowers each of our members to act as autonomous agents and to respect each others’ differences. The idea behind it is simple: no member, as a result of categorical status, should have more “power” than any other in the direction and shape of our union’s activities. In practice, however, this idea requires active participation of all our membership and one important form of this participation takes place at a GM.

TSSU committees take direction from the general membership. The GM is a place where, with consideration of the differences that exist within our membership, we can discuss what committees do, what issues we should address; it is a place where we can strategize about direction in terms of both our immediate working conditions and our place in the larger socio-economic and political contexts. Think of the slogan, the personal is political.

Often there is a pre-prepared agenda of items for discussion. This doesn’t mean that new items cannot be added. The membership is encouraged to add items or suggest amendments. Many of the items we deal with at the GM are “business” related in that they require approval of the membership before being acted upon. While this can at times seem tedious (especially because they are often mired in details) it is important that members know and understand what is happening so that we can make sure the things we are doing are the things we want to do. The Chair is responsible for facilitating these meetings and if at any point you have something to say, raise your hand let her/him know. S/he will then direct you as to the proper procedure.

What is really important is to create in the GMs a sense of this being the members space, a space where we collectively reflect on who we are, where we stand, how we got here and where we see ourselves in the future.

The SFSS has just launched their first video live on Youtube and www.sfss.ca, about the cuts to post-secondary education.

In the video, 11 students speak out against the cuts and how they are affecting them personally while trying to get their education at SFU.

The Youtube link is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLDFqEMb8IE

The positions of Coordinator, Organizer, Secretary, Chair, Ex-Officio, Education Commissioner, Communication Commissioner and Trustee I are now open and will close at the October GM. Nomination forms for these positions can be found here http://www.tssu.ca/forms, for positions descriptions/information see the by-laws or stop by the TSSU office (AQ 5129).

At our July GM we passed a motion to that defined the composition of the 10 member contract committee as: Organizer, Chief Steward, Grievance Officer, 2 stewards, 1 Sessional Instructor, I executive member, 1 ELC member and 2 general members.

At the September GM (Sept.21) we will nominate and elect members to populate this committee. The contract committee requires a level of commitment that exceeds that of other committees. If you are interested in becoming part of the contract committee please prepare a written paragraph that outlines your union involvement and qualifications for the September GM. There is a brief description of the contract committee in our by-laws. If you have any questions please contact us at tssu@tssu.ca

Come out to one of our General Membership meetings:

September – Monday, Sept. 21, 12-1:30PM in MBC 2290
October – Thursday, Oct. 22, 4:30-6PM in Harbour Centre 1510
November – Wednesday, Nov. 25, 12-1:30PM in MBC 2290

FREE FOOD!

Other Canadian universities and colleges waive tuition for TA/TM/Sessionals who are students. SFU waives tuition for other employee groups on campus, but not for TSSU members. Should a demand for tuition waiver be successful, it would put us on a more equitable footing with the other employee groups on campus.

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