AGSEM

AGSEM Newsletter February 2025

Dear AGSEM members, old and new, 

The Association of Graduate Students Employed at McGill (AGSEM) is the oldest TA union in Quebec. Our members are graduate Teaching Assistants (Unit 1), Invigilators (Unit 2), Course-Based Academic Casuals (Unit 3), and Writing Centre Employees (Unit 4 - for now, read more below) employed at McGill.

Table of Contents

Before we get started…

An invitation to all fed up McGill workers:

Are you mad about budget cuts (haven’t heard about this? Keep reading.)? Do you hate the financial insecurity that this university instills in us? Do you want to do something about it?

Sign up here to stay in the loop for a top secret event, coming up this semester… 🕵️‍♂️

Winter 2025 Events and Assemblies*

Legend: ✊: All units, ☝️Unit 1, ✌️Unit 2, 🤟Unit 3, 🖖Unit 4

AGSEM News

Teaching Support Budget Cuts at McGill

At their 7 and 12 February town halls, McGill—represented by President Deep Saini, Provost/VP Academic Christopher Manfredi, and VP Administration and Finance Fabrice Labeau—laid out their plan to address their financial woes: cost-cutting austerity measures which will largely be felt by workers. Watch their first town hall here. Their language: “reductions in salary mass”. They have tasked units in every faculty with implementing 4.5 to 5% budget cuts and communicating how they will do so by early March. This is likely to result in hundreds of lay-offs and reductions in the number of available jobs. Workers in all units of AGSEM may face disproportionate cuts. Last Fall, Dean of the Faculty of Arts Lisa Shapiro communicated to departments that they should prepare 15-20% cuts to teaching support budgets in their departments. 

All the while, when pressed about senior administration taking a pay cut, Saini, Manfredi, and Labeau dodged the question. Many senior administrators make in a year what tens or hundreds of TAs make. Their plan is named “Horizon McGill”, but their myopia keeps them focused on their own inflated pocketbooks.

Beyond asking departments to make sacrifices, the brunt of which will be felt by workers, McGill is also teaming up with the corporate consulting firm UniForum to cut corners. McGill again dodged the question when asked how much they would spend on these consulting services, which have been described as vampiric.

All units of workers in AGSEM—indeed, all workers at McGill—cannot take this lying down. Stay tuned in the coming weeks to learn how you can resist McGill’s cruel and misguided cost-cutting measures.

Join us in the fight! Fill out our interest form to share how you can help push back against the cuts.

Unionization: Writing Centre Update

The AGSEM Executive Committee is pleased to announce that the workers of the McGill Writing Centre have unionized! MWC workers were overwhelmingly in favour of forming a union in order to be able to negotiate a raise with the employer. After depositing union cards on November 29, 2024 with the Quebec Labour Board, the unit of employees was certified as a union with AGSEM on January 16, 2024.

The definition of the unit is as follows: 

Currently, the McGill Writing Centre is Unit 4 of AGSEM, but workers of existing AGSEM’s Units 1-3, as well as from the Writing Centre have expressed a willingness to merge the existing Unit 3 Academic Casuals with the Writing Centre workers. The employer has also indicated that they are open to this merger under Article 39 of the Quebec Labour Code. The next step will be presenting the will of the workers to the Quebec Labour Board.

To this effect, we are holding a short 30-minute online Special General Assembly this Friday, February 21 at 1:00pm. The only point of discussion will be a motion about whether the McGill Writing Centre Workers want to officially join AGSEM’s Unit 3 or remain a separate bargaining unit. RSVP here to receive the link and participate in your union democracy.

Likewise, Unit 3 will have a short 30-minute online Special General Assembly this Friday, February 21 at 12:00pm. Again, the only subject is confirming the willingness of Unit 3 academic casuals to include Writing Centre workers in their unit by combining certifications. RSVP here.

Invigilators: Pre-Bargaining Update

The Invigilator Collective Agreement, that is, the document governing the working conditions for all invigilators at McGill, expires on December 1, 2025. This means that we have an opportunity to re-negotiate this agreement to improve our working conditions (anything from pay to breaks, to hiring, to protections against harassment).

The first step of the bargaining process is understanding how invigilators feel about their work conditions and what they would like to change. If you’ve worked as an invigilator before please fill out this survey, it will help determine the bargaining priorities for invigilators and will enter you in a draw to win one of two $50 gift certificates to Librairie Pulp Books & Cafe!"

Establishment of Queer CAT and Anti-Racist CAT

At the 3 February 2025 Delegates’ Council, delegates voted to establish a Queer Contract Action Team and Anti-Racist Contract Action Team (CAT). These are especially pertinent in light of upcoming Unit 2 and Unit 3 negotiations! 

Queer, trans, and racialized workers in AGSEM face unique challenges at McGill. The Queer CAT will research and explore how Collective Agreements at other universities and institutions have created specific protections for queer and trans workers, and work with our bargaining committees to figure out how we might get similar protections in our Collective Agreements. Similarly, the Anti-Racist CAT will explore how we can win specific protections and improve the conditions of racialized workers. 

Interested in getting involved? Fill out our interest form or email us at mail@agsem-aeedem.ca ! 

TA Unit Assembly: Organizing Against Budget Cuts and Reviewing the Strike

Calling all graduate teaching assistants! There is a unit-wide assembly on Tuesday, February 25th in the McIntyre Medical Science Building, Room 521. 

Dinner is at 5:30 pm and we will start promptly at 6 pm! RSVP here

What’s on the agenda:

A detailed agenda will be sent out at least 24 hours before the assembly. 

TAs continue refusing to work for free

Teaching Assistants (Unit 1) continue to say: they will not work for free. Approximately half of TAs work an average of 13 hours over their contract, per year—an average of $470 per TA and over a million dollars in unpaid pages. But a total of 320 TAs have pledged to not work a single minute over their contracts, since Fall of last year. This includes 70% supermajorities of TAs in several departments, big and small: Philosophy, Quantitative Life Sciences, Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Occupational Health (EBOH), Anthropology, Global and Public Health, Physics, and Sociology. 

At a time of budget cuts and austerity, it is crucial that all workers tell McGill: our labour matters, and McGill works because we do. 

Will you join TAs in resisting McGill’s wage theft? Sign the pledge and learn how to track your hours and follow your contract here.

In the Community

Ici, on boycotte amazon / Here, we Boycott Amazon

After an ambitious two-year campaign, Amazon workers at the DXT4 warehouse in Laval successfully unionized with the Confédération des syndicats nationaux (CSN), our affiliate union, in May 2024. Following this ambitious unionization campaign, Québec was the only province in Canada to host unionized Amazon workers. Amazon’s cruel response to this unionization has been to close its warehouses and operations in Québec, leaving up to 4500 workers without jobs.

This dramatic move is part of a shock-and-awe approach intended to stop unionization efforts at Amazon not just in Québec, but around the world. As a union, we have to stand up! 

At our 3 February 2025 Delegates’ Council, AGSEM’s delegates voted in favour of a motion endorsing the Here, we Boycott Amazon campaign. 

We urge all of our members to stand in solidarity with the campaign. Follow the instructions on their website to delete your Amazon account and 

We also urge McGill to join other institutions in Quebec—including the city of Montreal—in boycotting Amazon. Among the largest universities in the province, McGill ranks first in Amazon expenditures, approaching nearly a million in spending in 2023.

Message from our Concordia Research and Education Workers Union (our sister union, CREW-CSN)

Hello dear comrades at AGSEM!

CREW is currently in the critical phase of our negotiations. After nearly a year of normal bargaining we have finally, as of last week, entered into conciliation with our employer so as to finally hear their response to our monetary demands. Said response has been broadly disappointing, especially given the 10 weeks it took them to respond since seeing our demands: as such, CREW is holding three special strike general assemblies this week – one this past Monday, one today, and a final one on Saturday – to vote on a strike mandate for our union.

We are phonebanking a bunch to increase attendance at these sessions! If you wish to help with that or anything else as we prepare for a possible strike, or to attend one of these assemblies as an observer, reach out to CREW via our instagram (@crew.csn) or our email hello@crew-csn.com.

As always, we are incredibly grateful for the strong relationship with our sister union, especially in this historic time. CREW <3 AGSEM forever!!

Solidarity,

The CREW Strike Preparation Committee