More than a year after our last collective agreement expired in June 2014, TAs at McGill are reaching the end of the bargaining process over a new contract. McGill’s administration made its final offer at the bargaining table on September 1, and TAs will be voting at the General Assembly for their union, AGSEM, on September 30 to determine whether to accept this offer or fight back by striking.

AGSEM’s primary goal in bargaining has been to keep TA hours consistent with undergraduate enrolment in order to maintain the quality of education at McGill. Essentially, we want to ensure that there are enough paid hours during which we can do the work that needs to be done. Over the past decade, the number of TA hours per undergraduate student at McGill has plunged significantly, from 12.86 in 2006 to 11.25 now, with the fraction of the operating budget dedicated to TA wages dwindling every year. Skimping on funding for teaching support means that there are fewer and lower paid TA jobs for graduate students, many of whom are already struggling to make ends meet in programs with no guaranteed funding. It means that some of the work TAs would have done is picked up by professors at the expense of their other commitments, by overworked course lecturers with limited union protection and no job security, and by underpaid course graders. Mostly, however, it means that undergraduate students end up with more and more multiple choice tests, fewer office hours and opportunities for one-on-one or small group learning, and a less fulfilling education overall.

McGill’s teaching assistants deserve – and desperately need – better working conditions.

AGSEM’s bargaining demands include indexing TA hours to increasing undergraduate enrolment and guaranteeing sufficient TA funds in McGill’s budgets for faculties and departments (as deemed necessary by professors in those departments). AGSEM also wants to establish stricter limits on TA positions  of fewer than 45 hours per semester, as these often lead to more work being offloaded onto grader positions that provide less educational support and pay much less per hour.

These demands – intended to preserve both the quality of educational support at McGill and the ability of our fellow TAs to pay their tuition and rent – have been met with absolute refusal by the McGill’s  senior administration, who declared the University  was only willing to bargain regarding the hourly wage. Even on this front, the University’s offer is inadequate. The administration’s final offer to TAs would only increase wages by $200 to $250 per year (assuming a student manages to get 180-hour positions in both the fall and winter semesters). With stagnant wages, increasing costs of living, and a shrinking pool of TA hours, this proposal isn’t enough to meet the needs of TAs. Additionally, under this offer, out-of-province and international students, who make up roughly 45 per cent of McGill’s graduate student body and are particularly reliant on on-campus jobs, cannot even cover their tuition increases. TA conditions are set to get worse, not better, under this proposal.  

Although McGill’s administration claims to be short on funds, its words at the bargaining table make it clear that cost is not the barrier preventing it from meeting our demands. When discussing AGSEM’s demand that McGill partially reimburse TAs’ health insurance and tuition, as is standard at other universities, McGill’s negotiators stated that the University’s objection was a matter of principle, not of cost. Much the same can be said of McGill’s refusal to guarantee an adequate number of TA hours or an adequate budget line from which to pay us. The issue is not cost, which would be well within its means (the TA budget is currently about 1.1 per cent of McGill’s operating budget), but rather the administration’s refusal to set any sort of precedent that might commit them to prioritizing fair and equitable conditions for students and workers.

One last option: a strike

On September 30, AGSEM members will vote on whether or not to accept McGill’s offer. As present and former members and elected officials of AGSEM, we know that McGill’s teaching assistants deserve – and desperately need – better working conditions. We also know that McGill’s administration concedes nothing without pressure. Although this is the final offer at the bargaining table, TAs still have a chance to fight for our university – by rejecting this offer and voting to strike.

Consider some of the gains that workers have won from going on strike.

First, every major gain McGill TAs have won has been due to a strike. And every time we have gone on strike, we have won something important: in 1976, a base salary and protections against overtime that set a precedent nationally; in 1998, a reduction in salary disparities across the university (TA salaries were completely equalized in 2006); and in 2008, after a two-month strike, the TA workload form that ensures that contract hours are equivalent to the amount of work required, as well as another significant pay increase.

Second, teaching assistants at the University of Toronto won increases to the guaranteed minimum funding packages for graduate students when they went on strike this year. They had initially won guaranteed minimum funding by striking in 2000.

This fall, students and workers across Quebec will be mobilizing against public funding cuts and increasing labour precarity. With other education sector workers also facing worsening working conditions, we will have opportunities for media exposure and solidarity actions with other workers. There is no better time to go on strike.

Voting for McGill’s offer will lock TAs into another four or more years of struggling to secure jobs to pay the bills, working unpaid overtime, and neglecting our studies and research to get second or third jobs to make ends meet. It will mean years of hard-to-reverse changes to undergraduate education as courses are cancelled or modified to provide little to no feedback for students or contact with instructors.

At AGSEM’s general assemblies over the past year, TAs have consistently demanded wages with which we can pay the bills and protections against declining TA hours. Our bargaining team did what it could to make those demands heard at the bargaining table. Now, it’s up to us to take a stand for ourselves, for future TAs, for current undergraduates, for the quality of education at McGill, and against the austerity mentality that is attacking education and public services across Canada. Negotiations at the bargaining table have come to an end. The only option left is to go on strike.

In addition to the authors’ active involvement in AGSEM in the past five years, Benjamin Elgie (also former chair of the Daily Publications Society), Megan Mericle, Sunci Avlijas, and rosalind hampton have held elected positions on AGSEM’s executive. Mona Luxion is also a former Daily columnist. To contact the authors, please email m.luxion@gmail.com.  

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What insights can the labour movement gain from the organizing strategies of media workers? Precarity has arguably been one of the defining features of broadcasting and newspaper work. Against these labour conditions, media workers have a long history of mobilizing.

Since the birth of the labour movement in Canada in the 19th century, media workers have been at the forefront of labour struggles and social change. Newspaper printers were at the centre of one of the most significant events in the history of the Canadian labour movement: the 1872 strike at Toronto newspaper the Globe.

On March 25, 1872, after the paper’s management neglected the Toronto Typographical Union’s demands to work less than 12-hour days, the printers went on strike. These workers were among the pioneers of the international Nine-Hour Movement for a shorter workday. On April 15, 1872, a demonstration was held in Toronto in solidarity with the striking printers. A parade of around 2,000 workers quickly grew to 10,000 people, representing about 10 per cent of the city’s population at the time.

As capitalism accelerated, the labour press gave workers a crucial autonomous platform.

Following the strike, the federal government passed the Trade Unions Act (1872), legalizing labour unions in Canada. Beyond legislative reform, after 1872, many of the labour movement’s more radical demands stemmed from the news workers strike, including the demand for a shorter workweek. The Toronto Trades Assembly, a major labour organization at the time, also published the weekly publication Ontario Workman, Canada’s first labour newspaper. As capitalism accelerated, the labour press gave workers a crucial autonomous platform to not only raise awareness of labour injustice and oppression, but also to fight against it.

This practice of autonomous or alternative labour-based media is still important today. In April 2007, locked out workers at Journal de Québec created their own newspaper, Média Matin Québec, urging people to boycott the Journal. Sun Media Corp., the owner of the paper, locked out 140 unionized staff, deciding to end negotiations with workers regarding salaries, the length of the workweek, job outsourcing, and media convergence.

With the support of their union, the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), news workers published and distributed around 40,000 copies per day of their free alternative paper, from Monday to Friday. The paper ran for more than 14 months, the duration of the lockout. It was meant to serve as a pressure tactic to force the employer to return to the collective bargaining table.

Another strategy is to use alternative or community media to support non-media workers. Campus-community radio and television stations can use media to build links and solidarity with the labour movement. An example of solidarity-building media is the monthly “Labour Radio” show on CKUT 90.3 FM. Community media programs like “Labour Radio” are important to counter mainstream, profit-driven media and provide spaces for alternative voices.

[In mainstream media,] strike coverage is typically centered on the effects of the dispute, often erasing the broader context in which it emerges.

Compare mainstream media and “Labour Radio” coverage: the former tends to focus on events rather than issues. One of the key events through which corporate media frame labour is the strike. Strike coverage is typically centred on the effects of the dispute, often erasing the broader context in which it emerges. To address these work stoppages, mainstream media typically use biased, anti-worker language, based on assumptions of mobilization against the labour movement.

Unlike profit-driven media, “Labour Radio” regularly includes in-depth coverage of concrete labour issues. Without this discussion, many people aren’t usually able to fully grasp labour events. “Labour Radio” is also inherently pro-worker and supports the labour movement: often, stories are about the projects of rank-and-file workers.

For example, a December 2011 “Labour Radio” show included a piece about McGill University Non-Academic Certified Association’s A Christmas Carol hardship fundraiser for workers following the fall 2011 strike, and the importance of union strike funds. Also aired was an in-depth interview with Michel Daigle, the president of the union representing workers at a pork processing plant in St. Simon, Quebec, who were locked out since 2007, and a documentary about the labour of basket-making in India. Workers and unions are not only reflected on Labour Radio but also help to directly oppose anti-labour biases found elsewhere in the media.

In addition to autonomous or alternative media, a key strategy of precarious media workers is to organize collectively in unions. L’association des journalistes indépendants du Québec (AJIQ) is a union that represents freelance journalists in Quebec. AJIQ is affiliated with La Fédération nationale des communications (FNC). FNC is a federation of unions that represents around 7,000 communication workers in Quebec.

AJIQ fights to improve the socio-economic and labour conditions of freelance and contract journalists, some of the most precarious media workers who don’t typically form unions. It has also supported individual grievances related to worker pay (for example, underpayment, no payment, or late payment). In addition, AJIQ has fought for the recognition of author rights of independent journalists.

If the labour movement is looking to move beyond precarity, it can learn a lot from, and build solidarity with, media workers.

Errol Salamon is a PhD student in Communication Studies, and can be reached at errol.salamon@mail.mcgill.ca.

Errol will be hosting a panel on media strategies for labour on Thursday, November 7. Panelists include Mariève Paradis, a freelance journalist and President of AJIQ; Lisa Djevahirdjian, a Conseillère syndicale for SCFP (CUPE); and David Tacium, a CEGEP teacher with experience on the executive of his union amd host of “Labour Radio” for six years. For more information on Labour Week at McGill, and to view the full schedule, please visit interunionvoicemcgill.com.

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