SFU teaching assistants, tutor markers, sessional instructors and language instructors plan to put a damper on their university’s 50th anniversary celebrations and the first day of classes with picket lines next week.
It’s the latest move by SFU’s Teaching Support Staff Union (TSSU) in an ongoing labour dispute with the university.
On Thursday, the union announced it will picket the Applied Sciences Building at the Burnaby campus on Sept. 8 from 7:30 a.m. to noon and the Academic Quadrangle on Sept. 9 from 4:30 to 10:30 p.m. to coincide with SFU’s sold-out “Celebrate and Savour” 50th anniversary celebration.
“After 16 months without a contract and four months of job action, SFU administration is still stalling and is still unprepared to negotiate,” stated a TSSU press release Thursday.
The union, whose contract expired April 30, 2014, is demanding seniority rights for sessional instructors, who represent 25 per cent of the university’s teaching positions but have little job security, according to TSSU spokesperson George Temple.
Other demands, according to Temple, include protecting teaching assistants and tutor markers from overwork and underpay, giving grad students more access to teaching-assistant and tutor-marker jobs and extending SFU’s standard benefits package to continuing language instructors.
TSSU has withheld students’ grades since July 21.
The union announced its picketing plans after two days of mediation with the university. A final day of mediation with a Labour Relations Board mediator was scheduled for Sept. 4.
The university expressed disappointment at the union’s plans.
“While we are proud of SFU’s long tradition of engagement and activism, we are disappointed that the TSSU is targeting students, and even impacting the livelihood of their own members, in an attempt to influence their own negotiating position,” wrote SFU communications director Kurt Heinrich in an emailed statement.
Heinrich said the university is committed to reaching a settlement, pointing to a tentative agreement to a collective agreement reached with CUPE on Aug. 28 and “significant progress” in bargaining with the SFU Faculty Association.
