Follow us on: Instagram and Facebook!

Previous Newsletter

Hi Invigilators and TAs,

We hope your semester is going well! Boy howdy do we have some news for you! Come to our General Assembly this Thursday, November 16 to get more updates in person, and celebrate the end of the semester with the Invigilator Assembly and social on December 14. In October, we celebrated AGSEM’s 30th Anniversary with a gala and ongoing digital and physical archival displays, and the Delegates’ Council took several important positions on Palestine, against tuition increases, and in solidarity with the Teaching Support Staff Union (TSSU) at Simon Fraser University (SFU).

Follow us on: Instagram and Facebook!

Previous Newsletter

Hi Invigilators and TAs!

Happy October, here’s your September newsletter!

One upside to the unseasonably warm Fall is that it’s still t-shirt weather—meaning, we can all wear our ✨snazzy ✨ new AGSEM shirts. On the front, we have our new trade union logo and the back has a beautiful design of a fist formed by martlets with the slogan, “United we bargain, divided we beg!” If you’d like to arrange an appointment to pick up your shirt in support of our TA negotiations, email us at mail@agsem-aeedem.ca. Otherwise, catch us on October 25 at AGSEM’s 30th Anniversary Celebration to grab a shirt.

The Association of Graduate Students Employed at McGill (AGSEM) Executive Committee stands in solidarity with the ex-executives of the Teaching and Research Assistants at Concordia (TRAC) and supports the formation of the Concordia Research and Education Workers (CREW) Union.

All executives of TRAC announced their intention to resign on 17 March 2023 in order to support a worker-led campaign to form CREW, a worker-led union. This effectively ends the relationship between Concordia TA and RAs with their parent union, the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC). Instead, Concordia TAs and RAs are encouraged to join CREW and be affiliated with the Confédération des syndicats nationaux (CSN).

Matei Petrescu (he/him) is a PhD candidate in Physics at McGill. He has been working as AGSEM Secretary Treasurer since 2018.

Where did you grow up?

I grew up in a one-bedroom apartment in Bucharest, Romania.

What is the focus of your academic research?

Experimental condensed matter physics. I study the physics of semiconductors where a two-dimensional sheet of electrons forms at low temperatures near absolute zero.

What do you like doing for fun?

On April 17, 2023, AGSEM General Assembly elected the new Executive Committee for the 2023-2024 academic year. All members of the 2022-2023 Executive Committee except the Macdonald Campus Officer have been re-elected for their positions. Read about the current EC team here.

This week we sat down to chat with Kiersten van Vliet, the Mobilization Officer and former AGSEM President. Kiersten (she/they) is a PhD candidate in Musicology and Gender & Women’s studies in the Music Research Department of the Schulich School of Music and has been a member of the union since 2015.

Aire McCall (they/them) is a second-year Master’s student in Animal Science at McGill’s Macdonald campus. They were recently elected to take the Macdonald Campus Officer position.

Where did you grow up?

I come from Beautiful British Columbia, as the license plate calls it, and it is so true.

Lakes, rivers, streams, forests, mountains, all right there for you whenever you need

them.

What is the focus of your academic research?

The second of our two spring General Assemblies was held on April 17 in hybrid format. The primary purpose of this assembly was to hold elections for union committees. Elected officials and committees also presented reports of their progress over the 2022-23 academic year.

As part of his 2022-23 mandate, AGSEM President Mario Roy presented reports about the ongoing unionization drive for graders, note-takers and other academic support workers at McGill, as well as the activities of the external affairs committee. Likewise, Mobilization Officer Kiersten van Vliet presented reports from the Mobilization-Communications Committee and Working Groups as well as the Invigilator Bargaining Committee. The financial reports and Audit Committee were already presented and approved at the March 28 General Assembly ( read more here).

On March 28, we had the first of two spring General Assemblies. The primary purpose of this assembly was for the Secretary-Treasurer to present the financial report of the previous year, approve the Audit Committee’s report of the union’s finances, and have the assembly approve the union’s budget for the coming fiscal year.

The 2022-23 Audit Committee of Sujatha Vijayakrishnan (Chair), Loïc Nassif, and Benjamin Sauvé found the union’s financial accounts to be in order, and made recommendations to explore growing our union’s strike fund by investing, increasing the amount of money earmarked for mutual aid and solidarity initiatives, and investigate how AGSEM can maximize the support we receive from our affiliates—the Confédération des syndicats nationaux (CSN), Fédération nationale des enseignantes et des enseignants du Québec (FNEEQ), and Conseil central de Montréal métropolitain (CCMM).

In November 2021, a petition was filed to the Tribunal adminstratif du travail to certify the association representing tenured and tenure-track law professors, the Association of McGill Professors of Law (AMPL) as a bargaining unit. Following legal challenges by the employer, exactly a year later, the labour tribunal has certified the group of McGill Law Professors as a union under the Quebec Labour Code. This historic decision comes as a feather in the cap to the academic labour movement at McGill, with AMPL becoming the first faculty-specific union at the university, and the first union representing professors at McGill.

In November 2021, a petition was filed to the Tribunal adminstratif du travail to certify the association representing tenured and tenure-track law professors, the Association of McGill Professors of Law (AMPL) as a bargaining unit. Following legal challenges by the employer, exactly a year later, the labour tribunal has certified the group of McGill Law Professors as a union under the Quebec Labour Code. This historic decision comes as a feather in the cap to the academic labour movement at McGill, with AMPL becoming the first faculty-specific union at the university, and the first union representing professors at McGill.