Bargaining
Each Bargaining Unit (that is, Teaching Assistants or Invigilators) has a Collective Agreement (CA) that is a binding contract negotiated by representatives of AGSEM and representatives of McGill’s Board of Governors.
The Unit 1 or Teaching Assistant CA expired June 30, 2018 and AGSEM is currently in bargaining. AGSEM currently has one active Bargaining Committee, elected at the Winter 2018 GA for Teaching Assistants.
The Unit 2 or Invigilator CA expires April 30, 2020. In April 2019, an Invigilator pre-Bargaining Committee was elected.
TA Bargaining Committee
Jessica Rose
TA Bargaining Chair
I am a PhD student in the department of History and Classical Studies and Chair of the TA Bargaining Committee. I was previously an organizer for the New York State Nurses Association (a union for registered nurses) in New York City, where I also completed a certificate in Labor Studies at CUNY before starting my MA. As Chair of the Bargaining Committee, I am focused on integrating a discussion of academic community and the quality of McGill’s learning environment into AGSEM’s TA bargaining campaign. As graduate students, many of whom are aspiring academics, our labour is interdependent with the intellectual labour of the community around us, which includes our colleagues, supervisors, and undergraduate students. The boundaries of our labour can often be unclear within the context of our respective programs - we are both students and instructors, experts and trainees, employees and funded researchers. AGSEM's Collective Agreement will ensure an investment in fair and reasonably compensated teaching assistantships, something that is fundamental to the pedagogical values of the wider university community. I believe that unionized graduate student labour is in a uniquely valuable position to address issues of precarity, austerity, corporatization in higher education.
Invigilator pre-Bargaining Committee
Mohammed Antar
Invigilator Bargaining Chair
Dear AGSEM members, I am currently a PhD candidate in Plant Science in the Department of Plant Science at Macdonald Campus of McGill University. I was recently elected to be a representative to the Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences (FAES) within Macdonald Campus Graduate Students’ Society (MCGSS). I joined AGSEM when my teaching assistantship and invigilator career at McGill started in January 2018. In April 2019 I was elected Pre-Bargaining Committee Chair of AGSEM.
For the upcoming academic year (2019/2020), my objectives are to understand all invigilator-related issues and try to solve invigilator problems with the support of the AGSEM Executive Committee. Fighting for invigilators rights and benefits is one of the things which will be my main focus. Therefore, I ask all invigilators at McGill, both downtown and at Macdonald campus, to feel free to reach me for any enquiry you may have.
Latest TA Bargaining Updates
FAQ
How does Bargaining work?
Each Bargaining Unit (that is, Teaching Assistants or Invigilators) has a Collective Agreement (CA) that is a binding contract negotiated by representatives of the union and representatives of McGill’s Board of Governors. The length of the CA is negotiated in this process.
One year before the expiration of the CA, the members of the bargaining unit elect a Bargaining Committee (BC) at their biannual General Assembly. This is also commonly referred to as a Pre-bargaining Committee, since we do not typically engage in negotiations until the CA expires. This BC is responsible for collecting data, conducting outreach, and identifying key areas of the CA to be re-negotiated. The BC will present a bargaining proposal to the General Assembly for their bargaining unit in the term preceding the expiration of the CA. If this proposal is adopted, the BC will prepare the proposal to be presented to McGill’s negotiators one month before the expiration of the CA. The members of the BC serve until the conclusion of the bargaining process, which means until a new CA is signed, but the members of the Bargaining Committee can step down or be removed from office by a member vote at any time and any member of the union can run for election to replace them.
Contact the TA Bargaining Committee
If you have any comments, suggestions, or concerns about any part of the TA Bargaining process, feel free to contact the TA Bargaining Chair in the form below.