By Nathan Todd, Contributor
This year, Ontario has seen significant and damaging cuts to funding for students, student associations, universities and the public employees who keep universities and communities running.
Many of you may have already felt the impact of these changes — there are already reports of students who are no longer able to attend university because of the elimination of some Ontario Student Assistance Program (OSAP) grants. In addition, the Student Choice Initiative left student and graduate associations scrambling over the summer in attempts to prepare for and minimize the funding cuts that the SCI would bring.
Teaching assistants who are often students are not immune to these negative effects. As students, we are affected by the cuts to OSAP, and as members of either the McMaster Students Union or the Graduate Students Association, we are also members of associations facing considerable budget cuts. On top of this, our ongoing rounds of bargaining with McMaster University for a new employment contract, among other things, threatens to leave us in an even more precarious situation.
As public employees, we are also now facing Bill 124, a proposed piece of legislation which would mandate that our wage increases do not exceed one per cent, an amount that does not keep up with the cost of inflation. In other words, Bill 124 effectively mandates that we take pay cuts over the next three years.
To put this in a better context, graduate TAs who work 260 hours (which is usually the most a TA can work at Mac) earn less than $11,500 for the year, and undergraduate TAs earn considerably less than that. This is not enough to balance the tuition we need to pay in order to have access to the job in the first place. Given these circumstances, increases to our wages and benefits are always a priority for us in bargaining. Unfortunately, McMaster is not willing to entertain an agreement that wouldn’t conform to Bill 124 should the bill become law. Therefore, meaningful wage increases seem to be a non-starter for the university.
Beyond Bill 124, McMaster is also looking to roll back the amount of hours TAs are entitled to work, making our ability to pay for tuition and keep up with the cost of living even more difficult.
Wage increases are not our only priority. One of the top priorities we identified before heading into bargaining was paid job-specific and anti-oppressive training for TAs. As it stands, there is no training for TAs. This means that they are learning how to run labs, teach tutorials, mentor and grade on the job! In asking for paid training, we are not asking for anything you wouldn’t expect from working in an office, a high school or a McDonald’s.
McMaster, however, is unsure if paid TA training is feasible. Let me repeat that: A university isn’t sure if it is feasible to teach people how to teach.
As a TA of about five years, I think we do a good job. But running tutorials and grading the assignments that go on to impact the lives of undergraduates is serious, professional work. As TAs, we recognize that. This is why we are asking for professional training to ensure that undergraduates are getting the highest quality teaching possible. Not only would paid training help TAs financially, but it would also benefit us professionally and it would benefit the students who rely on us.
If our bargaining continues to stall, there is a chance you will get messages from McMaster or members in the community about TAs being difficult or that what we are asking for is unreasonable. If this happens, please keep in mind that we are asking for things that any reasonable professional ought to — the ability to keep up with the cost of inflation and the proper training to do our jobs.
Given the attacks that university members have seen through the cuts to OSAP, the Student Choice Initiative and the looming Bill 124, it is more important than ever that we collectively resist attacks on the most vulnerable. McMaster claims it is committed to making a “Brighter World” – TAs and students deserve to be part of it.
Nathan Todd is the President of CUPE 3906
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By Lilian Obeng
On Oct. 1, 2018 the McMaster Students Union released its annual University Budget Submission. The point of the document is to demonstrate that students pay attention to the university’s spending, and by extension, priorities. As per the university’s budget for the 2018-2019 academic year, our student contributions via our tuition fees account for approximately 47 per cent of the McMaster University’s available funds.
The stated purpose of the submission document is to provide university administration an outline on how to reallocate existing funds to support student interests.
Highlighted in the document are recommendations to increase funding for the MSU Emergency First Response Team and the Equity and Inclusion Office, hire an additional counsellor, release exam schedules earlier, provide more open educational resources, discontinue the outdated Pebblepad feature and request more environmentally sustainable practices at the university level. Also guiding the direction of the document were the budgets and purported spending of similar institutions across Ontario.
The spirit and purpose of the submission is sound, but what is frustrating is the lack of teeth contained within the document. It fails to address how the university actively spends money to the detriment of student life both on and off campus.
The best and most visible example of this is the exclusion of Security Services’ hiring of Hamilton’s ACTION squad to patrol student areas. McMaster spends student-provided funds to increase the policing of students. This not only presents a threat to marginalized students given the ACTION squad’s history of racial profiling, it means that students are being used as a quick cash grab by the city for minor, undisruptive bylaw offences.
Combined with the massive, ineffective and at times violent enforcement projects that take place during special occasions like Homecoming and St. Patrick’s Day, a considerable amount of money is not being disclosed to students by the university, and thus is excluded from the MSU’s advocacy efforts.
The submission is also decidedly limited in its recommendations to the university regarding financial accessibility. As with the MSU’s educational campaign, financial accessibility is only addressed through OERs and lowered textbook costs.
By all means, learning materials are increasingly expensive and certainly a place to look when attempting to reduce costs, but efforts should not stop there. To exclude topics such as tuition, and more concretely, scholarships and bursaries, is to fail to meaningfully address the sources of the financial burden placed on students.
Another area of concern are the institutions the submission document cites as inspiration like the University of Toronto. It must be stated that the university is a business, and some universities take that identity to the extreme detriment of students. Schools like University of Toronto are intent on privatization and intend to make that happen soon.
McMaster is a publicly funded school and will be for the foreseeable future; we as students should be wary of the unintended outcomes of ignoring the broader political context we inhabit, and inadvertently advocating for changes that harm future students.
The practice of developing documentation such as the university budget submission should continue. It provides professional development opportunities to students working within the MSU, allows students to participate in the creation of policy and demonstrates our organizing capacity and legitimacy to university stakeholders. We should take special care, however, to ensure that students are being properly communicated with, and that our advocacy is meaningful and concrete.
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