By David Dyck
SGM this week will decide what form job action will take
Last week, the Teaching Support Staff Union held a vote of its membership to determine whether or not to take job action. The preliminary result, according to the TSSU, is that 90 per cent of voters were in favour of job action. Although representatives have not yet released the full voting numbers at the time of printing, they stated that their turnout was higher than that of any GSS elections.
This does not necessarily mean that a strike will take place, however.
“We essentially have the legal right now to take job action, but the decision to actually do anything always rests with our membership,” said Derek Sahota, a spokesperson from the TSSU. There will be a special general meeting held this week to decide on what course to take. Before any job action takes place, the union has to give 72 hours notice to the employer.
Job action could range from instructors taking several minutes in tutorials to explain the strike, to “full picket lines, which is obviously not anything that anyone ever wants,” said Jeff Zurek, another member of the TSSU contract committee.
Justin Wiltshire, a current SFU graduate student who was a TA several times in his undergraduate career, voiced some concerns he had about the union’s position. He argued that there was a lack of balance in representation as well as the quality of the work that is done by TAs.
“I imagine that graduate students are making up the largest proportion of the membership,” said Wiltshire. “I think that you need to have equal representation of all the groups, otherwise you’re going to see what you see now, which is that the TSSU functions as an agent essentially for the graduate students, whereas really the Graduate Student Society should be fulfilling that role.”
Wiltshire’s concerns about work quality have to do with his personal experience. He said that he has had instructors “come to me after they were supposed to have taught their students certain concepts and asked me to explain them. A number of them have told me that they just don’t give a damn, and that it’s not important to them.”
Wiltshire told The Peak that in his opinion, pay should be linked more intrinsically to merit. “When people don’t do a good job they should not be given another chance . . . and when people do do a good job I think they should be able to be rewarded.”
Overall, he stated that he was satisfied with the level of compensation he received for his work.
Sahota and Zurek addressed these concerns. “I think that as a union we do always think of our sessional members who are not graduate students, and always have them on our mind,” said Sahota. “We understand the issues and we get really good feedback from them. I think that’s generally true of all the parts of our membership.”
Regarding the quality of work, they stated that if TAs are doing a poor job, based on the collective agreement, the onus is on the departments to carry these out. “If they don’t do the mentoring first, followed by the evaluation, it’s a problem within the system, it’s not necessarily the TA’s fault,” said Zurek. “That system has to change and work the way that it’s supposed to work even now.”
Last week there were banners displayed around the AQ during the president’s BBQ for Employee Appreciation Day reading “Mr. President, engage us, save SFU.” Although the TSSU officially denied being involved with putting them up, they displayed pictures of them on their Facebook page. Sahota said it was “a great message to the president, to engage the workers, because that’s what has not happened.”
“This is a really positive opportunity to do exactly what Petter has been advertising,” said Zurek. “There’s so many things we have on the table that we say are not monetary that can make this school so much better, and really that’s been our message all along. Changes don’t actually have to cost a lot of money.”
The university informed The Peak that they do not discuss negotiations outside of the bargaining table.
