Teaching Assistants' Strike at University of Toronto & York University

[The Intransigent Faction]

Zane Schwartz is a fourth-year student at the University of Toronto. He was named one of Canada’s Top 20 under 20.


Teaching Assistants at York University and the University of Toronto are on strike. At first glance these seem like classic labour disputes, but they are a warning of how fundamentally flawed the Canadian university system has become.


At U of T, the administration’s position is, to put it mildly, ridiculous.
Graduate students at U of T receive a minimum funding package of $15,000 a year. This amount hasn’t increased since 2008, and it’s well below the $19,307 poverty line (https://www.utgsu.ca/committees-caucuses/research-education-governance-committee/povertyline/) for a single adult living in Toronto. After 12 months of negotiation the university hasn’t budged – it’s still offering $15,000.
Graduate students currently make $42.05 an hour but are limited to 205 hours a year. U of T has offered to pay $43.97 (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/education/university-of-toronto-teaching-assistants-set-to-take-up-picket-lines/article23241319/) an hour but will cap the number of hours at 180 starting September 2017. So instead of making $8,965.06 graduate students will actually make $8,231.18 – which is $733.88 less.
Absurdly, they will still have to do the same amount of work. Papers are not magically going to take less time to mark and class times will not suddenly run 45 minutes instead of an hour. If anything, Teaching Assistants will likely have more work to do two years from now, as classes and tutorials get bigger every year.
In any event, talking about TAs hourly wage is deeply misleading. TAs actually work a lot more than 210 hours a year and U of T knows this. By focusing on the increase in the hourly wage they can distract from the real issue at hand: that the majority of graduate students will make the same amount of money and some actually face a pay cut.
What is surprising is how many media outlets are repeating without analysis U of T’s claim that it’s offering a raise. Again: U of T is offering a $733.88 pay cut.
An increase in the hourly wage will make no difference for the vast majority of TAs, as their overall funding will remain at $15,000 a year. Whether they’re making $42.05 an hour or $43.97 the total money they get from U of T remains $15,000. The handful who do extra work, such as those lucky enough to have a second Teaching Assistant position, will make $733.88 less than they would under the current agreement. And it’s not like they can get another job as many graduate students are prohibited from taking outside work and all are expected to do research full time.
What’s happening at U of T and York is symptomatic of a larger problem across Canada. Underpaid part-time staff teach a majority of undergraduates in Canada (http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/most-university-undergrads-now-taught-by-poorly-paid-part-timers-1.2756024). For example, at U of T contract faculty and teaching assistants do 60 per cent of the teaching but make up 3.5 per cent of the budget. This is not an isolated problem. According to one study, the number of contract faculty in Ontario increased 87 per cent in between 2000 and 2014 (http://www.thestar.com/yourtoronto/education/2015/02/25/strike-deadline-looms-for-u-of-t-york-u-teaching-assistants.html).
While contract faculty and teaching assistants are doing more of the teaching nationwide, their salaries and job security have not changed. They have no job security. Contract faculty do not enjoy academic freedom protections. No matter how hard working someone is, if they’re worried about feeding their families they’re going to be distracted in the classroom.
It’s not even in U of T’s best interest to pay so little. U of T is losing out on top talent every year to similarly-ranked schools in the United States that offer $5,000 or even $10,000 more a year. U of T regularly boasts about being the top school in the country, but it won’t stay that way if the best graduate students choose not to come here.
Paying the people who do the majority of teaching a salary that is above the poverty line won’t solve all the problems in academia, but it sure would be a good place to start.


Well, I know what I'm going to say the next time U of T asks for money...

[ckaihatsu]

http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/1088.php


Socialist Project - home
The B u l l e t

Socialist Project • E-Bulletin No. 1088
March 6, 2015

Socialist Project - home

Austerity for working people and the accumulation of wealth in the corporate sector was sold as short-term pain for long-term gain. What we got of course was pain now, pain later, and never-ending pain if we don't organize to end it. The continuous pressure on public and private sector workers seems now to be leading to resistance, especially in the public sector. Yet though the latter struggles directly involve the state, unions are taking them on one at a time and this means that they remain fragmented, isolated, defensive. To its credit, the CUPE locals have framed the current strikes at the University of Toronto and York in these broader terms, emphasizing the growing precariousness of work in this formerly ‘privileged’ sector, the impact on the quality of education, and the larger context of government funding cutbacks. It is crucial to both support all these emerging struggles and at the same time constantly ask how they can be taken further.

Austerity Strangles Ontario:
the TA strikes in Context

http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/b1088.jpg

http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/b1088b.jpg

David Bush and Doug Nesbitt

Toronto is in the midst of an unprecedented strike by over 10,000 Teaching Assistants (TA) and contract faculty at York University and the University of Toronto: the country's two largest universities. Only blocks away from the University of Toronto picket lines, the Liberal government in Queen's Park has been waging a war against the Ontario Public Service (OPS), represented by OPSEU, raising the prospect of the first OPS strike since 2002. From universities to the public service, from healthcare to municipal services, the Ontario Liberal austerity regime has now lasted longer than Mike Harris’ time in office.


Their approach has usually been different from the frontal assault of the Harris years. The Liberal government, especially under Wynne, has been adept at carrying out austerity by isolating potential struggles. Cuts and tough bargaining are directed against one sector of the public service, while others are temporarily left alone, to suffer under a slow strangulation of funds.

When it comes to revenue problems, the Liberals are happy to blame the lack of federal transfers on the Harper Tories. But this is only half the story. The Liberals have repeatedly cut the corporate tax rate, have written off $1.4-billion in owed corporate taxes, and wasted billions on privatized “P3” hospital construction.

The gas plant scandal cost the province a billion dollars, while the Ornge air ambulance scandal is only the tip of the iceberg of large, steady salary increases for top management in public services – while frontline workers are getting squeezed, contracted out, and legislated back-to-work.

Unwilling to tax the rich, or tax the corporations, or bring revenue-generating services under public control (like Highway 407 or the Beer Store), the Liberals are only looking for savings by cutting services and holding down wages.

Their answer to everything is turning the screws on workers and when that doesn't work, using heavy-handed legislation, like Bill 115 against the teachers.

Healthcare Battles

With labour battles plaguing every level of the education system, a parallel battle is taking place in healthcare. Essential service legislation and arbitration means Ontario's hospitals have largely avoided major labour disruptions. But in all other healthcare sectors, government agencies and private healthcare companies are pushing workers to strike over the fundamentals.


Poverty wages led to the SEIU home care workers strike at Red Cross in December 2013, and another PSW strike by OPSEU members in Renfrew County in September and October 2014. Only last month, healthcare workers represented by the Ontario Nurses’ Association went on strike at most of the province's Community Care Access Centres.

As more services and costs are downloaded onto municipalities from the province, municipal workers are also bearing the brunt of austerity. Eager to avoid strikes and lockouts, most municipal governments have cut costs by slashing services, like childcare, and contracting out services such as snow-clearing.

But there have also been difficult strikes, like the one by Durham Region municipal workers against the employers’ effort to divide the local by targeting the minority of paramedics with major concessions. At the crossroads of municipal service and healthcare cuts, paramedics are facing particularly grim working conditions.

The Private Sector

The Liberal assault on the public sector is mirrored by policies that aid and abet what can only be described as a war on workers in the private sector. Low oil prices and a lower dollar may help the province's manufacturing somewhat, but the reality is manufacturing (and food processing) has been decimated. The slashing of corporate tax rates has done nothing to offset the tens of thousands of jobs destroyed since the 2008 recession.

Again and again, the Liberals have allowed corporations to run roughshod over workers and the towns they live in. Like Harper's Tories, when the employers have the upper hand, it's hands off. When Heinz decided to abandon Leamington so people like Warren Buffet – the 3rd richest person in the world – could collect bigger dividends, no effort was made to stop it, broker a new buyer, or create the legal and financial space for a cooperative to be built.

In London, Kellogg's was allowed to shut down its unionized factory despite the province handing $4.5-million to the corporation to revamp its non-union Belleville factory only two years earlier.

“

But when workers exercise real power, like Ontario teachers or Toronto transit workers, their rights are stripped away. ”

In Toronto, workers at Crown Holdings, a factory which produces beer cans, have been on strike for 18 months battling two tier wages and the use of scab labour. The Liberals are happy to let them stay out.

But when workers exercise real power, like Ontario teachers or Toronto transit workers, their rights are stripped away. The Ontario Liberals have successfully appealed a court ruling which knocked down laws against agricultural worker unionization. Meanwhile, the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board continues to deny help to workers most in need while the WSIB management continues to rake in huge salaries.

Connecting the Struggles

Until policies are changed to collect revenues on those who can afford to pay – corporations and the rich – the Ontario Liberals will continue to push for concessions from workers, rolling back the gains that generations of Ontario workers fought for.

This won't happen without a fight and until now, the battles of workers in Ontario have been too fragmented. Where real successes have happened, like the fight for a higher minimum wage, labour has come together and bridged the gap between union and non-union workers through on-the-ground activism.

The first step now is to hit the picket lines at the universities and with striking Steelworkers at Crown Holdings. There are plenty of students and striking TAs who will take on the #BottlesNotCans campaign.

Bringing together these strikes with the burgeoning OPS contract fight, and showing up at OPSEU’s numerous rallies and info pickets, Ontario workers can begin to build some real solidarity and power capable of taking on the Liberals. •

David Bush and Doug Nesbitt are editors at RankandFile.ca, where this article first appeared.

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[ckaihatsu]

http://www.socialistproject.ca/leftstreamed/ls252.php


Home » LeftStreamed

Solidarity with CUPE 3902 and 3903

Toronto — 6 March 2015.

kk8zAk3ZC4I

View on YouTube website (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhiXBRrj94Pep24JhQk5ZOKsuop6RUoHK)

Solidarity rally was held on the grounds of the University of Toronto with the striking members of CUPE 3902 and support from Canadian Federation of Students (CFS-Ontario), U of T Students' Union, CUPE 3903 and others. #WeAreUofT
Protect tuition indexation at York University, with strike captain Jen Cypher of CUPE 3903. #BetterYork

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[The Intransigent Faction]

Below is a letter of solidarity (signed by the UAW 2865 Joint Council) to those on strike at the University of Toronto:
March 3, 2015



Dear Comrades at CUPE 3902...:


As the activists and officers of UAW Local 2865, we represent more than 13,000 graduate student teachers, readers, and tutors from across the University of California system. We are writing to express our complete solidarity with you during your current strike. From all across California, we are following closely your struggle.
We fully support your pursuit of a living wage. That you are currently paid below the poverty line and that your pay has not increased even with rampant inflation is beyond outrageous. That many of you are forced to cover rising tuition costs simply to work for a poverty wage is reprehensible. As a public institution, the University of Toronto must address this injustice and support the young scholars who represent the future of teaching and research.
We, academic workers throughout the world, in private and public universities, are facing increasing attacks on our working conditions and livelihoods. Only by maintaining bonds of solidarity can we seek to create an academia free of oppression and exploitation. As graduate student workers, and as fellow union comrades, we wish you a resounding victory in your current strike.
We urge all members of CUPE 3902 to demonstrate solidarity by ceasing all work and show strength with Unit 1 on the picket line!
Academic Workers of the World, Unite!
In Solidarity,
UAW 2865 Joint Council