Teaching assistants on strike have been a source of controversy on the campus of the University of Toronto in recent weeks.

The University of Toronto and striking teaching assistants reached a tentative agreement on issues surrounding teaching assistants on campus on March 18, but the deal was struck down by a small margin after being put to vote by the participants in the strike.

The strike, which began at the end of February, is centered around teaching assistants, represented by CUPE 3902 Unit 1, part of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, and the University of Toronto. The main issue is the severely low wages that these teaching assistants are paid, according to the CUPE 3902 webpage.

“The consensus of those in attendance at the special membership meeting was that people felt disrespected by U of T administration, and they require compensation which reflects the high standard of instruction our members provide,” said Erin Black, union chair, in a Feb. 27 legal strike release regarding the protests.

Feedback from concerned students suggests that the strike is interfering with their education, as many classes are being canceled or are forced to end early due to striking teaching assistants or disruptions by the protests outside of school buildings. Students began to protest outside of administration buildings for an agreement to be met to end the striking, according to a March 18 article by the Toronto Sun.

Students whose education is being jeopardized by the strike are protesting on the grounds that this many disruptions and cancellations of class time are interfering with their academic rights. They are fighting for refunds from the university for missed class time as a result of this strike, according to the Toronto Sun article.

CUPE 3902 began the strike displaying concerns that teaching assistants at the university were making an income 35 percent short of the poverty line defined by Statistics Canada for the work that they do at the University of Toronto, according to the CUPE 3902 website.

Details of the tentative agreement that occurred on March 18 were not to be released until they were put to review and voted on by members. Less than a week after the tentative agreement, it was announced that the strike would continue because the agreement was rejected after a vote of just over 1,100 to 992, according to a March 23 article by CBC News Toronto.

Strikers rejected the contract settlement, and the union is demanding no less than a minimum funding package for graduate student teaching assistants at the University of Toronto, which happens to have the one of the highest tuitions of higher education in Canada, according to the CBC News Toronto article.

The rejected agreement would have provided better wages than the teaching assistant’s were making prior to the strike, improved benefits and better financial assistance, the university said in a statement.

“Our members have spoken overwhelmingly,” said Black in a statement on the CUPE 3902 website. “They have said we are poor, precarious and we need an increase in our standard of living,”

Published on March 25, 2015 at 10:46 pm

Contact Erin: eemcdona@syr.edu