After having their tuition rebates withheld by the university, Carleton’s teaching assistants have filed an unfair labour complaint against the university to the Ontario Labour Relations Board.
CUPE 4600 unit 1, the unit representing TAs in bargaining for a new collective agreement with the university, stated
that the university refused to pay out money owed to their members because the issue is currently on the bargaining table.
“Carleton decided to take one aspect of the collective agreement and decided they weren’t going to follow it,” said James Meades, president of the union. “This is illegal, so this is what we filed the unfair labour practice over.”
Since graduate students have to pay tuition in order to work as TAs, they’re entitled to a rebate under their collective agreement. Each year, they only owe the tuition they paid in their first year of graduate studies. As tuition rates increase, they’re paid back the difference.
The complaint was filed Dec. 18.
“Having them say right before the Christmas break, ‘hey listen, a few hundred dollars, maybe thousands if you’re an international student, that you were expecting to see in your account is not going to be there’ is really difficult for people to face,” Meades said.
But the university stated TAs will receive their money.
“Carleton is committed to continuing to provide this tuition assistance,” Don Cumming, director of university communications, said via email.
“The university will complete the calculation and processing of the Tuition Increase Assistance for the fall 2013 term by January 10, 2014 at the latest, and will deposit the appropriate amounts in the student accounts,” he said.
The statement also said the university informed the union of this before they filed the complaint.
The union said they filed the complaint anyway as a matter of trust.
“At this point we have no evidence that the university actually will do it and the sad point is, we simply can’t trust them on their word at this point because they’ve been so willing to ignore the law before,” Meades said.
CUPE 4600 has been in negotiations with the university since September 2013 when the collective agreements with TAs and contract instructors expired August 2013.
The union has asked a provincially-appointed conciliator to help in the negotiations.
The conciliator is a government officer who will determine if the two groups are too far apart to meet a compromise at the bargaining table.
If this is the case, either Carleton or CUPE 4600 can call for a “no board report” at which time they have 17 days to sort out their differences before the collective agreement expires, the employer can lock out the members of the union, or the union can strike.
Conciliation is nothing new and has been a part of the bargaining process between CUPE 4600 and the university since TAs began negotiating in 1979, according to Meades.
“The steps of conciliation generally reflect a lack movement on the things that are really big concerns for us,” Meades said.
Carleton has a reputation for what’s called brinkmanship bargaining, Meades said.
“This means they wait until the last possible minutes before a strike deadline to really start showing movement on key issues,” he said.
In the statement, Cumming said the university “remains committed to negotiating a settlement with the union.”
