By: Olivia Sherman, News Writer
The Teaching Support Staff Union (TSSU) announced their weeks-long work stoppage has ceased after a tentative agreement was reached with SFU in the early hours of October 19. The work stoppage started on September 28. It was an escalation of the larger strike that started in June, and saw teaching assistants (TA) stopping all work and picketing outside all three SFU campuses. Despite the work stoppage ending, there are still loose ends to tie up, such as SFU’s controversial hiring of a private investigation service to surveil students and staff. The Peak reached out to TSSU organizer, Kelvin Gawley, and TSSU media spokesperson and bargaining committee member, Dalton Kamish, to learn more.
A tentative agreement occurs when the employer and the union have settled on an agreement, but it has not yet been approved by union leaders. As the tentative agreement with SFU is still being approved, the details of the agreement remain confidential. In a statement on October 19, the day of the tentative agreement, the TSSU said the collective agreement for 2022 through 2025 would be renewed, and more details would arrive as they develop. Kamish told CBC News the agreement was “monumental.”
The Peak received a media statement from SFU regarding the tentative agreement, thanking “the entire university community for their patience and understanding during this time.
“The tentative agreement supports TSSU members with a wage increase, and other compensation and benefit enhancements, while delivering on the Province’s 2022 Shared Recovery Mandate,” which promises to offer inflation protection.
Lions Gate Risk Management (LGRM) is a private investigation service located in the Lower Mainland. Through eyewitness reports at all three SFU campuses, picketers reported unnamed persons “following [them] around, taking pictures of [them], watching [them], following [them] from campus to campus,” Gawley said. “We started noticing them pretty much right away.”
According to witnesses, there were at least three confirmed LGRM employees present at the pickets. Kamish confirmed LGRM employees were present at all pickets on all three SFU campuses, spanning September 28–October 10, and “were working at least 12-hour days recording TSSU members and others on the picket line.”
With these numbers, The Peak confirmed SFU paid LGRM up to $35,000 to surveil students and staff for the 10 confirmed days they were employed by the university. SFU did not comment on this inquiry.
After severe backlash, the university retracted their contract with LGRM on October 11. In a statement that day, SFU said they hired LGRM to “help [them] to monitor picket line activity,” and the company was hired solely to record protesters in case of “behaviour escalation at the picket line that could constitute bullying or harassment or physical safety or assault.” The university said they “will reassess how [they] support safety on [their] picket lines going forward.” Kamish also described a “revolving door” of employment between SFU and LGRM. Andrea Ringrose, SFU’s Senior Director of Campus Public Safety, was formerly the Director of Security Intelligence at LGRM. Mark Lalonde was the Chief Safety and Risk Officer at SFU and currently acts as the senior vice-president of strategic initiatives at LGRM.
Gawley said it’s “absolutely galling,” and “so concerning to know this is who SFU chooses to bring onto our campus to surveil us and to watch us.”
Despite SFU saying LGRM did not engage with or approach picketers on campus, Gawley said this isn’t true. He described one man, later identified as an employee of LGRM, who “just kind of [inserted] himself into a conversation with some people on the picket, and didn’t identify himself” to ask questions about the protestors.
“We don’t know beyond the very obvious what these people were doing on behalf of the school, who they were giving information to, and what information they were collecting on us,” Gawley said. “Those are questions we still don’t have answers to [ . . . ] this is how they choose to treat members of their own community, who have the audacity to demand a fair contract. I don’t think that’s something any of us will ever forget.”
Logging company Teal-Jones hired LGRM to surveil environmental activists at Fairy Creek, Vancouver Island, where LGRM employee Ram Sandhu reported information on protestors back to the RCMP. The Indigenous studies faculty, the SFU Black Caucus, and the SFU faculty association (SFUFA) all wrote letters of condemnation against SFU’s choice to hire LGRM, now known for its work infiltrating peaceful protests and surveilling activists.
“SFU’s engagement of private security to surveil students, employees, and community members should cause all of us to question how the administration in fact sees us,” said SFUFA’s executive committee in their letter of condemnation.
SFU’s Black Caucus wrote an open letter to the university over concerns regarding this surveillance: “This action creates a risk for all picketers but especially for racialized people, given the known disproportionate impact of surveillance and policing on Black, Indigenous and racialized individuals, including within the SFU community [ . . . ] It is important that the university not only acknowledges the harm that was produced by utilizing surveillance tactics, but also reconciles these harms.”
Toward the end of the strike, SFU and TSSU agreed on a private mediator, Ken Saunders. Kamish explained both parties can agree on a mediator. While there is generally a split between the cost for the mediator from each party, Kamish said SFU is “footing the bill, in this case,” which TSSU took as a sign of good faith and a willingness to bargain meaningfully. “As soon as we started the mediation process, we saw that this was not the case.” Kamish recounts more acts of time wasting and nitpicking minute details, wasting the time of both TSSU and the mediator.
SFU also hired a retired lawyer, Steve Gorham, a human resources consultant located in Victoria. Despite being retired from his previous job at the University of Victoria, and his employment status being “self employed,” Gorham was hired to consult SFU starting January 2023, and Kamish noted, “They’re paying him a ton of money to do it.” According to an FOI obtained from TSSU, SFU paid Gorham $192,000 in expenses alone, such as plane flights and ferry tickets from Victoria to Vancouver, food, and hotel rooms. “He’s been helping the employer waste our time by slowing down the bargaining process to a grinding halt.”
Kamish explained TSSU and SFU both had much to lose by delaying bargaining, but “Gorham, as an external contractor, has nothing at stake. He’s already in retirement [ . . . ] He has no incentive to get us to a deal. He gets paid more the longer this goes on.”
Many student bodies and student unions declared their solidarity with TSSU over the course of the stoppage. TSSU’s picket at the Burnaby campus on October 13 saw workers from unions across Vancouver, such as the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), showing solidarity and picketing alongside TSSU. At a picket at SFU’s Vancouver campus, Toronto Raptors player and National Basketball Players Association (NBPA) vice-president, Garrett Temple, spoke on behalf of Canada’s only National Basketball Association team (NBA) in support of the strike. Temple announced the NBPA was donating $10,000 to TSSU’s strike fund.
In recognition of academic difficulties undergraduate and graduate students faced over the work stoppage, including GPAs being affected, SFU recently approved the motion to allow students to use a new grading system after viewing their final grades at the end of the semester. Students can decide to keep their final course letter grade, or accept a pass, credit, or no credit grade. A “pass” will be substituted for grades equivalent to a C- or higher. A “credit” grade is offered for grades equivalent to D. A “no credit” is offered for grades equivalent to a fail. However, none of the options in this grading system will impact the student’s GPA.
There is also an ongoing petition amongst undergraduates for tuition reimbursement. The petition, created by Undergraduate Strike Solidarity (USS) stated, “SFU’s administration has not only failed to address the entirely valid and necessary demands of TSSU, but has also recklessly jeopardized the educational experiences and financial stability of SFU students.” USS noted the 42 bargaining sessions were proof the university is unable to “prioritize the educational well-being of its students,” adding “education should not be held hostage to the failures of the university’s administration in addressing the needs of their workers and their disregard for our academic pursuits.” Despite SFU’s policy against tuition refunds for uncontrollable circumstances, the petition has gained 2,712 signatures at the time of writing.
