CUPE 4600, the union of teaching assistants (TAs) and contract instructors at Carleton University, is currently in bargaining with the administration to create a new collective agreement.
The process of bargaining always creates some uncertainty for everyone involved. This includes not only the two parties at the bargaining table, but also includes other staff, thousands of undergraduate and graduate students, and researchers and faculty at Carleton. I believe these periods of uncertainty are worth the improvements in the university that are provided through a negotiation process that involves many different people, and includes detailed and frank exchanges of ideas in order to resolve problems that all parties struggle with.
One of the shortcomings of this process is that many people who have an interest in and may be affected by the outcome are not present at the table. There are avenues available for the entire population of Carleton to contribute to this process. Our local union has worked hard to demystify and open up the bargaining process. We reached an agreement with the employer to allow folks who are not directly involved in the bargaining to attend a bargaining session and contribute some of their thoughts and experiences to our bargaining team. In CUPE 4600, this can include the many undergraduate TAs who contribute to teaching at Carleton.
Wages are one of the most contentious issues, and they are crucial to our members who have seen their compensation drop to historically low levels in the last 20 years. We also bargain about things such as evaluations, job security, and access to resources to do our jobs properly. For many students on campus, they are about to find out that so-called ‘tutorials’ may have as many as 70 participants, and that TAs and contract instructors may measure the amount of time they have allocated for marking a paper in seconds per page. We believe there is room for improvement in many aspects of teaching, learning, and research.
We are also distributing information about the bargaining process through our website, weekly digests, and at our meetings. The information is available to our members and much of it is also available to the broader Carleton community. We recognized the importance of maintaining confidentiality at the bargaining table itself, but we also believe that the issues being negotiated are important to the community as a whole. We encourage everyone to get involved and express their opinions and concerns.
The bargaining process may be confrontational at times and, in the short term, may create some uncertainty for everyone. We believe that fair collective agreements mutually agreed upon by both unions and the administration are crucial to making Carleton a better university. We are interested in hearing from all members of the Carleton community about how CUPE 4600 and our members can help create these agreements.
