With the first final exams at the University of Toronto less than a month away, the strike by some 6,000 teaching assistants, exam invigilators and other academic staff continued on Monday as both the CUPE 3902 Unit 1 bargaining team and university administration declined to accept offers put forth by the other.
Last Friday, CUPE 3902 Unit 1 communicated an offer to university administration that, according to Ryan Culpepper, chief negotiator and vice chair of CUPE 3902 Unit 1, represented “an absolute minimum” for what union members are willing to accept.
“It was take or leave; it was an offer for settlement,” he says.
The university responded with a counter-offer on Monday, which the CUPE 3902 Unit 1 bargaining team declined to accept.
“Basically, there are just two outstanding issues right now,” says Culpepper. “One is about the funding minimum, and one is about tuition relief for upper-year master’s and PhD students who are paying full tuition.”
He says that the deal offered Friday addressed these issues partly by moving around funding proposed by the university in the earlier offer that was rejected, and partly by calling for new funds on top of that amounting to nearly $600,000 spread out over approximately four years.
“We did all of the calculations based on numbers provided to us by the employer, and the cost to the employer to fully accept our proposal would have been just under $600,000 over the life of the agreement,” he says.
Culpepper says that the total dollar value of the agreement is “around $50 million” – though this is a ballpark figure and not an exact one.
Unit 1’s proposal would have brought the minimum funding to teaching assistants up from $15,000 plus a tuition waiver to $17,500 plus a tuition waiver.
Culpepper also says the proposal would have provided tuition relief for master’s and PhD students “who are unfunded, and who don’t get the tuition waver, and who are not taking classes but still pay full tuition,” and involved giving members of Unit 1 who are not receiving the tuition waiver a credit so that they only pay 50 per cent of the domestic tuition price – even if they are international.
The funding package and tuition waiver can also be subject to deductions. “If you were such an exceptional student that you won a $15,000 award, you would end up with no money gained, because it would dollar-for-dollar come out your funding package, and you would still have to work the mandated hours as a TA,” says Craig Smith, a teaching assistant and outreach co-ordinator on the Strike Committee for Unit 1.
Michael Collins, a PhD candidate in English, says the deal represented a “line in the sand below which the Union membership will not go.”
“The U of T seems committed to grinding down its ‘best and brightest,’ as it calls us, regardless of the cost to its undergraduate students, its global reputation, and so on. Personally, I am appalled by the administration’s failure to capitalize on this peace offering,” Collins says.
A letter emailed to students on Monday from Cheryl Regehr, U of T vice-president & provost, and Angela Hildyard, U of T vice-president, human resources & equity says that the two sides “resumed mediated discussions last week that intensified over the course of the weekend and into this week.”
The letter says that a counter-offer was made, and that revisions to the agreement they offered “were responsive to changes proposed by the Union.”
However, in describing the counteroffer, Culpepper says the university did not accept any of what the union proposed.
“They didn’t agree to put any new money into the agreement, and based on our costing, the agreement they offered today costs them about $22,500 less than the agreement we rejected on February 27” he says.
“We wish to provide each of you with the assurance that we are actively working with divisions and Faculties to identify concrete options for those courses that have been affected by striking CUPE 3902 instructors,” the letter from Regehr and Hildyard went on to say, acknowledging the closeness of the exam period.
Collins blasted the letter. “The administration’s false and deceitful communication of this latest development is perhaps their most shameful yet. It makes no mention that CUPE first reached out to them with a compromise offer, arrived at and endorsed by a majority vote of the CUPE membership,” he says.
