After 29 months of bargaining, the TSSU has settled their labour dispute
By Alison Roach
Last Wednesday at just past 4 a.m., the TSSU and SFU reached a tentative collective agreement to end their labour dispute. The agreement was reached after spending both Monday and Tuesday at the bargaining table, with bargaining lasting from 9:30 a.m. till 7:00 p.m. on Monday, and on Tuesday from 9:30 a.m. till early the next morning. The tentative collective agreement was partnered with a back-to-work agreement, which effectively ended all current and future job action by the TSSU.
The back-to-work agreement came into effect last Wednesday at noon, and outlined that the TSSU consented to ceasing all picketing action, and promised to facilitate the submission of student grades by their members by Wednesday, Nov. 28th. On the university’s end, the back to work agreement included a clause that prohibits any sort of retaliation towards TSSU members who participated in job action.
The agreement came on the heels of the TSSU launching an entire week of job action. On the Monday, TSSU members held a silent protest, greeting the SFU bargaining team as they walked into Bennett Library. A flying picket was also set up on Tuesday morning from 7:30 a.m. to 12:20 p.m. around the Robert C. Brown building. TSSU member Melissa Roth, who was picketing that day, said, “I know a lot of tutorials have been cancelled, including a lot of professors [who] have chosen to support the strike by cancelling their classes.” There were plans in place to put up a full picket on the Friday before the agreement was reached.
Before becoming finalized, the collective agreement has to first be ratified by TSSU members and approved by the SFU Board of Governors. As of press time, the TSSU and the university were unwilling to comment on the details of the agreement since it had not yet been presented to TSSU members. The details of the collective agreement reached were presented to TSSU members in a special general meeting last Friday. TSSU spokesperson Jeff Zurek last Wednesday, who explained, “The bargaining team will make that pitch then to recommend or not recommend to the membership.”
On whether or not he believes the agreement will be recommended to TSSU members, Zurek said, “I’m pretty sure we’re going to recommend it. I mean, it’s the best we can do given the hard situation . . . we were put between a rock and a hard place and had to deal with it.” After the agreement is either recommended or not recommended, it will go to an in-person, balloted vote by TSSU members as per BC labour law. The details of where and when this vote will take place have not been finalized as of press time. In the case that the agreement is voted down by the majority of members, the TSSU will start strike action all over again.
The bargaining on Monday and Tuesday leading up to the agreement was attended by SFU vice-president academic, Dr. Jonathan Driver, who “acted like a mediator in many respects,” according to Zurek. Since many of the TSSUs proposals centred around academic issues, Driver’s presence helped to speed along the process. Driver said, “The bargaining team on the university’s side was able to consult me about proposals from TSSU, and what the impact of those proposals would be on managing academic programs in the university.”
Of his decision to join the bargaining team, Driver explained, “I wanted to be available to our bargaining team so that they would have the opportunity to ask me questions that related to the academic side of the university, to help them understand what were reasonable proposals.”
In the end, the TSSU and SFU bargaining teams signed off on 37 items. One specific change that Zurek did mention was a clause for the creation of a centralized posting system for all TSSU related jobs, across departments. Another important aspect of the agreement is that it will continued to be worked on until the agreement comes up for renewal again in a year an a half. Jeff Zurek explained, “It’s kind of like continuing bargaining from essentially today. . . covering all the issues we weren’t able to cover because Simon Fraser University didn’t decide to bargain with us up until the eleventh hour.” Monetary concerns weren’t covered in the tentative agreement was. Said Zurek, “I’m satisfied with what we were able to accomplish, given the situation. There’s more work to be done as far as our collective contract moving forward to the future. For some of those groups who we weren’t able to protect in this round, either because for the sessionals SFU didn’t want to, and for our folks at Harbour Centre, which is more a monetary thing, we couldn’t because of the provincial mandate.”
Driver echoed the sentiment of satisfaction: “I think we’re all very please that we’re coming to an agreement and that our undergraduate students in particular will be returning to a more normal [routine], and will be able to get the information about their grades. So we’re happy.”
In the meantime, the other union on campus on strike, CUPE 3338, is still without a collective agreement, and will continue to take job action.
