It’s going to be a rough few months for Kirsten Francescone.
The master’s student has been a teaching assistant since fall 2010, but estimates that because of a payroll error by Carleton’s human resources department, her salary is about to be reduced by about $160 a month.
Francescone isn’t alone. Carleton teaching assistants received notice from their union, the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) 4600 Feb. 9 that the school will be docking their pay due to a two-year payroll error.
In the 2009 collective agreement, CUPE 4600 negotiated a tuition increase rebate for their members, which protects teaching assistants against tuition fee increases. However, the system that properly calculates the amount of money refunded wasn’t set up, according to assistant vice-president (human resources) Lise Labine.
As a result, teaching assistants who started after September 2010 got a rebate, even though tuition didn’t increase from 2009 to 2010.
To recover the funds, the university will deduct from around 1,800 teaching assistants’ paycheques over the remaining pay periods this semester.
The average pay deduction will be $212.50 over six pay periods, ranging from $88.98 to $1,022, according to CUPE 4600.
“It’s going to suck. To be perfectly honest, it’s going to be awful,” Francescone said. “It’s just really, really, really frustrating to work with an employer that absolutely does not care about their employees. There’s just no respect.”
Labine said she’s very sorry for the error and her department will do everything possible to minimize the impact on individual teaching assistants.
“We are in the process of preparing individualized letters to each of the ones that are affected by this, outlining how much they’ve been overpaid and indicating how we will be recovering,” she said.
The lack of communication from the university has been frustrating, Francescone said.
“They haven’t handled the situation; that’s the issue. To be aware that these cutbacks are going to take place but be completely silent to your employees, I have zero trust in the administration now,” she said. “I’m really upset about it. As soon as they knew this, they should’ve been in contact with us,” she said.
“Instead, there’s been complete silence, which is scary.”
Due to the “complex calculations” required, it’s taking some time to get the letters out, but the department is working as fast as it can, Labine said.
“We had not even had a chance yet to go out to the individual teaching assistants when, I guess, the union decided to undertake their own communication plan,” she said.
Ben Spencer, a master’s student who has worked as a teaching assistant for several years, said he personally had to tell the teaching assistants in his department.
“Every single person is just like, ‘No, they’re not going to take that money from me, I’m not going to allow that,’ and I’m like, ‘I’m upset too but be forewarned that you will have less money,’ ” Spencer said.
He said he relies on his paycheques and if he’s short, he doesn’t know how he’ll pay rent.
“It feels like I don’t want to go to work tomorrow morning at 8:30 in the morning, because they just treat me like shit,” he said.
“Why would I? I don’t trust them anymore.”
Moving forward, CUPE 4600 co-president James Meades said the union thinks this is a violation of the Employment Standards Act and that the union is exploring a possible grievance procedure.
