Hi! I’m Adrian Matias Bell (he/him), a first-year on-campus MFA candidate and Creative Writing TA. This past term, I TAed Sheryda’s Intro to Poetry class (CRWR 201) and really enjoyed it!
I’m also Creative Writing’s department representative for CUPE 2278, your TA union. In this blog post, I’ll tell you a little bit about CUPE, the basic rights UBC TAs have as unionized workers, and how to make sure you’re getting the worker protections you deserve.
If you have any concerns or questions related to what you read here, if you run into issues with your TAship, if you want to get more involved with the union, or if you’re just curious about CUPE, you can always email me at jmatiasbell@gmail.com!
What is CUPE?
CUPE 2278 is our local branch of the Canadian Union of Public Employees. It includes UBC’s TAs, tutors, markers, and English-language instructors, as well as Graduate TAs up at UNBC.
Like any union, we engage in collective bargaining with our employer to make sure our workers have a livable wage, safe working conditions (including freedom from workplace harassment and bullying), job security, and benefits. In our case, CUPE bargains with UBC’s Board of Governors. The result of those negotiations is our collective agreement, which establishes the rights of unionized workers. The collective agreement is a contract between the union and the employer that lasts for a fixed amount of time and is periodically re-negotiated. That’s actually happening this year – more about that at the end!
You can read our current collective agreement in full at this link. It’s informative, but very long. You can get a quick summary of it at this link!
The rest of this article will go over some important points from the collective agreement and tell you more about what they mean for you as a Creative Writing TA.
What are my basic rights as a unionized TA?
You have the right to not work more than the number of hours assigned to your TA position. At the start of the term, your professor should have given you an approximate breakdown of how they want you to spend those hours (the Allocation of Hours form).
Because TA positions are unionized, you are paid for all your hours in a given pay period without having to report them in Workday. This is because a TA’s workload can vary dramatically from week to week, but your rent and bills are the same every month.
That said, it’s really important to keep track of the hours you spend on TA work to make sure you’re not going over your allotted hours. If you’re ever getting close to that number, or if your actual allocation of hours is different than what your instructor predicted, please bring it up with your instructor or the TA coordinator! They will work to create a new TA appointment so you or someone else can fill the excess hours and be paid fairly for them.
If you have any concerns about doing that, please feel free to reach out to me at the email address above. Please remember that your communication will be confidential, and CUPE will never take action on your behalf without your explicit permission.
There’s no existing template for tracking hours, but here’s an example of the type of spreadsheet I use:
This allows me to easily calculate totals for how much time I’ve spent on different assignments and types of tasks. That way, I can easily compare my instructor’s hours breakdown to the way my hours have actually been allocated.
I also encourage you to talk to each other! Ask your fellow TAs about what strategies work for them when it comes to keeping track of hours; marking; supporting our students; and so on. We can learn a lot from each other!
What else should I know about being a unionized worker?
As a Master’s student, once you have been hired as a TA, you get two years of hiring preference over new TAs after your first year of employment. You must be hired for at least the same number of hours that you worked during your first year, but you are not guaranteed the same course(s).
If you have less than two years of TA experience, you will make $33.80 an hour. Past that, you will make $35.13 an hour.
TA duties in a single day can’t exceed eight hours without your consent. You can’t be required to work more than 24 hours a week, and you can’t be required to work before 7:30 A.M. or after 8 P.M.
Parental leave is available for TAs, although it is unpaid. You might be eligible for employment insurance or support from the union’s support fund. TAs are also eligible for up to five days paid leave of absence if they are addressing domestic violence in their life. Feel free to reach out to me or contact CUPE through their website if you have more questions.
Finally, your status as a student and your status as a UBC employee are separate and distinct. That means that employment decisions cannot be made based on your academic record, and your academic record cannot be harmed because of an employment issue.
How can I learn more about CUPE/how can I get involved with the union?
This is an exciting year to get involved with the union! First, it’s a bargaining year with the university. If you’re curious about bargaining and want to get involved, email me or advocate@cupe2278.ca.
There’s also an ongoing campaign to expand unionization to UBC grad students who are RAs, GAAs, and Work Learn students, so they can have the same worker protections as TAs. You can read more about that here, and you can sign a union card if you have a Work Learn or GAA position in addition to your TAship. If you’d like to get involved with the campaign, feel free to email me or reach out through CUPE’s contact form. I’m happy to answer any questions!
Thanks for reading, and I’m wishing you all a smooth end to the academic year!