CUPE Local 3902, the University of Toronto Education Workers’ union, is urging members to vote in favour of going on strike next week.

The current collective agreement with the union expired at the end of April, but negotiations with the university have been ongoing since July without either side coming to a final agreement.

The union represents TAs, lab demonstrators, PhD course instructors, invigilators, and those employed in accessibility services for all four campuses, as well as the Institute of Aerospace Studies.

If a strike vote is passed, TAs and lab demonstrators may be on the picket line early in the new year.

James Nugent, spokesperson for CUPE local 3902 Unit 1, outlined the proposal they put forward to the university.

“Our wage proposal is to maintain where we’re at. We are simply asking for funding to be kept at the level of inflation,” Nugent said.

The proposal includes saving the funding package, maintaining the package’s integrity, reinstating the Doctoral Grant eliminated by the Provost, having smaller tutorial sizes, and reducing tuition for graduate students funded for only four to five years (a PhD takes an average of six years to complete).

Nugent claimed that 47 per cent of tutorials have more than 50 students, and 100 tutorials have over 100 students.

Jaby Mathew, a political science TA at the St. George campus, echoed Nugent’s concerns regarding overcrowded tutorials, which he said affected the quality of education for undergrad students.

“I don’t think there should be more than 20 students in a tutorial. What kind of experience are the undergrads getting? If they have large lecture sizes and large tutorials, undergrads aren’t getting [the education] they should,” he said.

Mathew even went as far as to call himself and other TAs “grading machines,” as large tutorials require hours of grading, eating away at time to prepare and meet with students.

Nugent clarified that the vote won’t initiate a strike but gives the union legal stance to call for one. He said the union in fact hopes a positive strike vote will motivate the university to negotiate seriously just as it has in the past. Mathew predicts that a “strike vote is bound to happen.”

Nugent cited a recent piece from The Globe and Mail, which ranked U of T last in terms of student satisfaction.