If you have been paying attention over the last four and a half months then you probably know that CUPE 4600, the union representing your teaching assistants (TA) and contract instructors, has been in bargaining and is now in conciliation.
TAs do a lot of things. They do the majority of the marking required at the undergraduate level. If you are in one of those gigantic first-year courses with over 200 students then I am sure you have figured out that the professor or contract instructor does not do all that marking. TAs do.
They are the ones pouring over your painstakingly-written essays on sociological theory or introductory psychology. You committed hours—maybe—to writing those papers and TAs spend hours marking them.
What else? They teach!
If you have ever had a tutorial or lab then you know the person trying to explain neo-realism or cellular respiration. You know the person trying, sometimes desperately, to encourage you to participate and question the material in front of you while you and your peers stare at them, silent and sleepy, at 8:35 a.m.
You know the person who maybe took an extra couple of hours out of their week from their own student work to prepare a mid-term exam review when the prof’s version didn’t quite make sense to you, or answered your anxiety-filled emails about the first term paper.
We learn and teach the material, make lesson plans, schedule meetings with students, answer hundreds of emails, and we mark, mark, and mark some more.
TAs proctor your exams and offer reassurance that you will do just fine. We explain the same concept 50 times in many different ways to make sure you really understand.
Some TAs work in the writing centre on campus, some never get to see the students whose work they mark. Some don’t have offices or even a regular desk space to meet with students. Some work another job to make sure they can pay their tuition and stay TAs and students.
I loved my job as a TA and the majority of TAs I’ve met love their jobs now. The satisfaction you get when a student finally “gets it,” or says something so insightful your jaw almost drops, is beyond rewarding.
We care because we were—and some still are—undergrads. We are still students, so we really do understand the amount of work you did, or did not do as the case may be, for that assignment.
So why should you care about negotiations? Teaching and research assistants (and some contract instructors) are the only employees on campus who have to pay to work.
Like many of you already know, tuition keeps going up.
If our wages don’t go up, we essentially make less and less every year and have to give more and more of it back to our employer.
The working conditions of the people teaching and marking are also your learning conditions, and the way your administration chooses to treat TAs and contract instructors is an example of how they are willing to treat you.
The way your administration treats its employees and students matters, even if you haven’t directly felt the impact of this treatment yet. Carleton is a community whose key members are students, staff, and faculty—not administrators.
We are battling an administration that shows us time and time again that they value parking garages and higher tuition fees more than the students, employees, and education for which the university exists.
And why else should you care? Well, if a strike or lockout happens, all those things we do will stop. We are bargaining for quality education, equity, and respect, and we need your support.
