Have five minutes? Get caught up on the bargaining basics!

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Employers Demands

TSSU is currently in bargaining with SFU's Senior Administration to build
a collective agreement that ensures TAs’, TMs’, and Sessional
Instructors’ working conditions and compensation keep up with a
changing world and rising cost of living. The employer has proposed
concessions that would take away many of the improvements we have
won since TSSU's inception in 1978. Some of these specific concessions
are:

Reduction of seniority, benefits, and vacation for ELC/ITP
Despite significant profits generated by the ELC/ITP program, the
employer's bargaining team has proposed to take away the limited
seniority, benefits, and access to vacation time that ELC/ITP members
have right now. These changes would convert these jobs to a contingent
workforce with minimal rights, similar to sessional instructors.

Making Sessional Instructor work even more precarious
The employer now claims sessional instruction is a source of graduate
student funding. They've proposed that graduate students replace
sessionals, kicking those long-time instructors out of their jobs and
forcing PhD students to perform more work for less pay as compared to
TAships.

Removal of benefit plans for all members
The employer proposed replacement of the TSSU health and benefits
plans with “pay in lieu of benefits.” The removed plans could include
MSP coverage, extended health and the dental reimbursement.

Opting out of the Employment Standards Act
In response to TSSU's attempts to place the current law that requires
an employer to pay wages on time into the collective agreement, the
employer has proposed that SFU “opt-out” of the parts of the law they
don't like. Opting out would mean more TSSU members miss their first
and second paycheque of each semester.

TSSU's Solutions

TSSU believes that we need to make teaching jobs at SFU more secure,
not less. Three of our most important issues are:

Equality for ELC / ITP Instructors
ELC/ITP members teach English communication and language
interpretation skills at Harbour Centre and generate almost $2 million
per year in revenue, a significant profit for SFU. Despite decades of
service, these instructors receive temporary worker benefits that are far
inferior to the benefits received by the administrative support staff
members in the very same department. TSSU wants to end this inequity.

Seniority for Sessionals
Sessionals teach more than 25% of SFU courses and are paid far less
than other SFU instructors. Many of these instructors have taught for
years but have to reapply every semester for their own jobs. TSSU
wants to ensure these long-term instructors have true job security while
also ensuring that departments can give some sessional work to their
graduate students.

Ensuring access to TA/TM work for graduate students
SFU is cutting teaching assistant positions and offering courses that
merge distance and in-class platforms. Despite fewer available
positions, 20% of them continue to go outside the graduate population.
TSSU wants to address these changes, first by merging TA and distance
Tutor Marker positions to reflect the workload that extra students
create, regardless of how they participate, and second, to stop
departments from denying work to their own graduate students.

What we need you to do:
Get informed, go to http://bargaining.tssu.ca
Talk to your colleagues, including fellow grad students and faculty.
Watch for our votes and surveys. Give us your input!
Join a committee. email tssu(at)tssu.ca for more information.