By: Olivia Sherman, News Writer
As of June 12, the Teaching Support Staff Union (TSSU) has gone on strike, with an overwhelming 94% vote to take this action. Leading up to the strike, teaching assistants (TAs) began their labour action by refusing overtime pay for assignments taking over 17 hours a week, or the assignment of tasks taking over eight hours a day to complete. TAs also enacted classroom strikes, in which students are informed and updated on the strike priorities. The labour action culminated in picket lines formed outside various SFU buildings on June 16.
In an interview with The Peak, two members of the TSSU, Kayla Hilstob, the TSSU chair and member of the contract committee and Liam Kennedy-Slaney, a TA and steward in the department of Geography, explained the reasons behind the strike and the responses from SFU.
Hilstob, a PhD candidate in the School of Communication, elaborated on the priorities the TSSU is working for. “One key thing for benefits is that we want to increase mental health coverage for up to $2,500 a year, because, as you know, we are in a mental health crisis, and it’s incredibly expensive and hard to access mental healthcare. The employer has always said, ‘we support mental health and well-being of students and our workers,’ and we can say that’s really not true, because they don’t want to give us anything into the mental health coverage.”
Hilstob also pointed to the increasing class sizes as a cause of mental health distress for TAs. “We want to improve compensation to address overwork caused by new modes of teaching and increasing class sizes.We’re doing more online classes. We’re looking at growing class sizes. And there’s no cap on the amount of students that can be in a class.”
Kennedy-Slaney, a PhD student who works as a TA for geography classes, explained that despite his love of teaching and engaging with students, he had been struggling with finding time for his own research under the weight of grading and tutorial planning. “It takes a lot of time and energy to be a dedicated and helpful teaching assistant,” he explained. “It’s also the thing that I’m always thinking about [ . . . ] my mind becomes filled with tutorial planning and grading, and these things.
“And then, you know, of course, at the end of the semester, about 40 papers come in that are all really well-written, and deserve a lot of attention, but need to be turned around within 5 or 6 days [ . . . ] what we’re really looking for is fair compensation for that kind of work, because, as I said, myself and most other graduate students make very little progress on our own.”
“It’s our right to have a picket line. You know, we take it very seriously, and we’re going to keep fighting.”
Kayla Hilstob, TSSU Chair.
There are many concerns related to healthcare coverage, Hilstob said. “They want to eliminate enrollment for international student health fee coverage, and they want to replace it with this individual reimbursement process which makes coverage harder and less robust. [ . . . ] So basically they want to add all these little cuts and hurdles to health coverage that should be easy to access.
“The university has retaliated against our strike by threatening to cut off our extended health and dental benefits, and cut off the international student health fee that we’ve earned through bargaining in the past and through strikes [ . . . ] we see this threatening international student health free coverage as particularly egregious, as it’s an attack on international students rights.”
Hilstob elaborated. “This is all an attack on our disabled members, folks who need extended health care. Why is SFU attacking our most vulnerable members?
“SFU has not cut off our extended health benefits yet, but they have said they will,” Hilstob said. SFU has communicated to TSS that unless they pay a “$40,000 bill a month,” their extended health and dental benefits will be terminated. “Which is completely egregious, right? Because it’s our earned right. It’s in our collective agreement.”
The Peak reached out to SFU for a statement and was directed to visit its website on strike updates. According to its statement, the school highlights it has not cut health benefits for TSSU members, and that the responsibility of paying for health benefits goes to the union when strike action is taken.
According to another statement from SFU on June 16, the school has “received reports from members of the university community concerned about certain behaviours at picket lines” from union members. For those affected by “harassment or intimidation,” SFU encourages reaching out to resources and mental health services. Hilstob completely denies these allegations, and said that this is “complete hypocrisy.”
“We’re fighting for better healthcare and mental health care for our members, and they’re threatening to get away. “It’s our right to have a picket line. You know, we take it very seriously, and we’re going to keep fighting, [ . . . ] It’s our right to make noise. It’s our right to ask people not to cross a picket line, and they’re [ . . . ] trying to smear our actions that are completely our right, and there will be some disruptions on campus. That’s what the picket line is, and it’s up to you to accommodate students.”
Kennedy-Slaney explained that many faculty members have shown support for the protestors. “[They] expressed their moral support of the strikes, and they have put their bodies on the line and joined us on the picket lines on Thursday” and “proudly waved the Simon Fraser University Faculty Association flag.”
Kennedy-Slaney encourages students and non-TSSU members to not cross the picket line and support the TSSU in its labour action. “I think one of the snappy, nice ways to think about those buildings when a picket line is surrounding is that they are lava. So you know, picketed buildings are lava. Don’t go in, don’t set foot on it. Avoid it.”
This is a rapidly changing situation, and The Peak will update its information as bargaining continues.
Editor’s Note: This article has been corrected to reflect that Liam Kennedy-Slatey is not on the contract committee. It has also removed the School of Communications involvement in the strike as they did not consent to appear in this article.
