Thurs 19 Oct 2023
On Thursday 19 October, the second round of Teaching Assistants’ negotiations with McGill began!
On our side were, once again, our Bargaining Committee (Dallas Jokic, Nada El Baba, and Nick Vieira) and our TA Grievance Officer (Jean-Philip Mathieu). On this occasion, we were joined by our President (Mario Roy) over Zoom. Our negotiation and grievance advisor from our affiliate union, the Fédération nationale des enseignantes et des enseignants du Québec (FNEEQ) (Sébastien Boisvert) was also there to advise us.
After exchanging proposals and agreeing to ground rules at the first session on 21 September, negotiations began in earnest at this second session. McGill and AGSEM made significant progress on several articles—something AGSEM sincerely hopes remains the case moving forward– including intellectual property, labour relations and university governance, grievances, and several others.
We were once again joined by five wonderful members of the union! Three of whom were there for the first time. Our friends in the room supported us with notes and pieces of information. For example, one member relayed to us their difficulty in understanding whether they were eligible for multiple TA appointments—a topic of discussion at this meeting.
Another big topic of discussion was TA job security, and ensuring that TAs have access to TA jobs before they are offered to other employees of the university. AGSEM and McGill made progress on this front, but could not come to an agreement. This topic will be revisited at future meetings.
This second session was another example of our pursuing a truly open style of bargaining. Want to attend a future session of negotiations, in-person or remotely? Please fill out this form to indicate which topics interest you, and we’ll keep in touch.
The next round of negotiations will be on November 9th, but your Bargaining Committee is trying to schedule more sessions between now and then, and afterwards. If we meet earlier, you’ll be the first to know.
United we bargain, divided we beg!
Love and solidarity,
Your Bargaining and Bargaining Support Committees