You Deserve Clear Job Expectations - Unit 3 Bargaining Update #15
On January 23rd, we met with McGill for the first new-year U3 bargaining session! After meeting with our members at the January Unit Assembly (UA), we let McGill know we are ready to move forward with article 14.05, and pushed them to better define the role of tutor as they see it.
Regarding Article 14.05, we spent a good number of sessions last semester arguing for the importance of a conflict of interest (COI) policy specific to Unit 3. No other unit of AGSEM runs the risk of grading other people in the same program and at the same academic level; invigilators do not grade, and teaching assistants are almost always attached to undergraduate courses. Unit 3, however, has a great number of undergraduate members who find themselves grading the courses their peers, friends, lovers, or exes might be in! Nobody wants that.
We took what we had for 14.05 to the UA earlier in January, and are ready to move ahead with it! This is a huge step forward! This policy affords unit 3 members the ability to flag when someone they have any kind of personal relationship with, while not requiring the worker to do the extra work of establishing an alternative arrangement. Furthermore, you are protected in disclosing this relationship!
During the bargaining session, we also pushed McGill on their definition of a tutor. It is a tricky term, as there are unionized tutors at McGill who tutor for specific courses, but there are also some tutors who are not unionized, and instead just tutor on a subject-by-subject basis (such as Latin language tutors).
Our goal in negotiating different positions is to establish very clearly defined job roles. That way, workers hired for one job know a rough estimate of their potential responsibilities. Without clear, delineated positions, the employer has a lot of power! They can hire someone to do one job, and then assign them much more arduous work that was not in the job description. We don’t want that.
Because of this goal of ours, we are not sold on the tutor role being included in the contract as it pertains to course-based work. Our research also shows that a good number of tutors in Management, the department with the most tutors university-wide, are being assigned grading as part of their tutoring contract. That could (should) just be a course assistantship instead!
We also have an update on article 6 (Harassment, Discrimination, and Sexual Violence). Similar to article 14.05, Unit 3’s article 6 needs to address the reality of undergraduate workers attached to course-based work involving fellow undergraduate students; so, much like article 14.05, we had set our sights on protecting our members by extending the definition of harassment to include student-on-employee misconduct. To that end, a clear definition of ‘university community’ that McGill and the bargaining committee has agreed to include in article 6 is an invaluable move towards worker protections you deserve.. There is still a long way to go for article 6—McGill is incredibly hesitant to address deadnaming and pronoun misuse as a form of harassment, two things that our membership has flagged are very important—but this is a step in the right direction.
On our side of the table were the newly-elected Emma Moore (4th Year, Industrial Relations), Donald Morard (PhD Candidate, Grader, History), Jordan Cowie (2L Faculty of Law), Guillaume Forest-Allard, our advisor from our affiliate union Fédération nationale des enseignantes et des enseignants du Québec (FNEEQ), and Dallas Jokic (AGSEM President, PhD Candidate, Philosophy). We also had all of our unit 3 bargaining support committee attend!
Do you have thoughts and insights to provide (of course you do!)? Please do not hesitate to reach out to bargaining.casual1@agsem-aeedem.ca with your insights, questions, or concerns!
And if you want to attend our next bargaining session, please fill out this form to sign up and we’ll be in touch!
Love and solidarity,
Your Bargaining and Bargaining Support Committee