The Steward: January 2010
All you ever wanted to know about collective bargaining!
What is collective bargaining?
Collective bargaining is a method for employees (ie. Teaching Assistants) to negotiate through a representative (ie. a union) the labour contract with the employer (ie. UBC). The labour contract details wages, hours, working conditions, and other agreements between the employees and the employer. Without the Collective Agreement gained through the union's bargaining, each employee would have to form an individual agreement with the employer. By bargaining together, the employees gain more influence during negotiations.
Who represents me?
As a Teaching Assistant at U4C, you are represented by the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Local 2278.How do I know what my rights and duties are?
The current Collective Agreement details your rights and duties including information on vacation, leave, reappointment, and grievances. Be sure to read it!What is a bargaining year?
A Collective Agreement is a fixed term agreement. A year in which a Collective Agreement is expiring and a new Collective Agreement is being negotiated is a bargaining year. Our current agreement expires on August 31st, 2010. If a new Collective Agreement is not agreed upon by the expiry date, the current agreement continues in force until a new agreement is reached.
What does collective bargaining looks like for us?
As we usually begin bargaining four months prior to the expiration of the Collective Agreement, that makes this an interesting time for teaching assistants at UBC.
For one thing, we will be bargaining a new contract in the shadow of the Olympics. Since the provincial government holds the purse strings at the bargaining table, TAs should be watching closely what happens to the province's finances in the wake of the Olympics. If the government starts crying poverty in February or March ("Who would have thought hosting the Olympics would be expensive?"), we can expect the university to take a hard line when it comes time to bargain our new contract in the fall.
In this potentially difficult bargaining climate, it's especially important that our bargaining team have clear direction from the membership about what our priorities should be at the table. To this end, we've held a series of membership meetings over the last year to identify important issues; furthermore, we've just closed a survey aimed at determining just how important which issues are to TAs at UBC. Aside from the usual issue of increased wages, there are several places we have identified in the Collective Agreement that could be improved to make TAs' lives better. For example, we would like guarantees on adequate office space and paid time off for TAs during comprehensive exam periods. We also want to add more ways to initiate having a TA's workload checked in case the workload is too heavy.
Now, you might be wondering why, in the last round of bargaining, we signed a contract that would expire in the year following the Olympics, when money was likely to be tight. This is the result of a particularly ingenious--albeit cynical--move by the provincial government. When we were bargaining our current Collective Agreement, back in 2006, the government of British Columbia came out with the following offer, to all the public sector unions then in bargaining: sign a new contract that lasts until after the Olympics, and all your members will receive a $3000 "signing bonus". Now, $3000 is nothing to sneeze at for anyone, but it's especially significant to a TA--$3000 is close to a third of what a full TAship earns in a year. So, of course, we made sure our members got the signing bonus.
But here's an interesting consequence of the signing bonus: Every public sector union in BC has their Collective Agreement expire in 2010, within a few months of each other. This is a unique opportunity to co-ordinate our bargaining efforts with other public sector unions across the province. Our local has already been participating in meetings between university sector CUPE locals from all across BC--including other locals at UBC--to strategize for bargaining in 2010, building solidarity with other university workers. Whatever happens, 2010 should be an interesting year!
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