{"id":9106,"date":"2012-10-20T15:56:53","date_gmt":"2012-10-20T23:56:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/workplace\/?p=9106"},"modified":"2012-10-23T07:38:29","modified_gmt":"2012-10-23T15:38:29","slug":"cupe-2278-tas-have-everything-to-gain-with-strike-vote-at-ubc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/workplace\/2012\/10\/cupe-2278-tas-have-everything-to-gain-with-strike-vote-at-ubc\/","title":{"rendered":"CUPE 2278 TAs Have Everything to Gain with Strike Vote at UBC"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Wednesday, 24 October,\u00a0CUPE 2278<\/a> teaching assistants at the University of British Columbia (UBC) will take a strike vote.\u00a0 For each and every one of the graduate students, this should be a \u2018no brainer\u2019 yes, to escalate labour action: Yes to solidarity with CUPE 116<\/a> and SFU\u2019s CUPE 3338 support staff on strike<\/a>; Yes to migrating the student movement from Quebec to BC; Yes to taking a stand for equity and fairness, and yes to the future of education.\u00a0 This escalation comes at a strategic time across the province as CUPE support staff collectively takes stands against years of employer and government suppression of wages.\u00a0 Universities and government have for too long designated the likes of public school teachers, support staff, and teaching assistants as net zero workers<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As GTA wages at UBC have been stagnant (i.e., 0%), administrative salaries have skyrocketed.\u00a0 From 2005, the year UBC began to merely roll over CUPE 2278 contracts, to 2011, the last year of accessible data, the President\u2019s salary rose from $434,567 to $528,504 (22% increase).\u00a0 The Provost\u2019s salary increased from $230,887 to $321,023, a whopping 39% increase!\u00a0 The salary of VP Human Resources, who manages bargaining for the University, jumped from $191,793 to $230,704 (20% increase).\u00a0 The Director of Faculty Relations\u2019 salary rocketed from $119,615 to $198,209 (41% increase).\u00a0 And so on.\u00a0 Deans have made certain that there is similar progress with their salaries.\u00a0 For example, the Business Dean\u2019s salary bounced from $334,196 to $422,304 (26% increase) while the Education Dean\u2019s salary leaped from $216,519 to $261,732 (21% increase).\u00a0 Through 2010, the Arts Dean\u2019s salary quickly grew from $191,408 to $249,816 (30% in 6 years).\u00a0 It is no mystery why the ranks of managers at UBC have swelled in numbers over the past few years.\u00a0 The transition of Associate Deans and others to management via the 2010-12 Collective Agreement<\/em> merely instrumented trends and ambitions.<\/p>\n

Some faculty members\u2019 salaries have kept pace, basically for those in Business or jumping at chances for an administrative stipend or retention fund. \u00a0Like CUPE, it has been tough slogging for the Faculty Association of UBC <\/a>and Business made ground only through its own, elite faculty association.\u00a0 If it were in my power, I would give the TAs 5% per year, no questions asked, and freeze administrative salaries, with a new net zero worker mandate for management fat cats living large, for a decade as a slap on the hand for irresponsibility and status quo.\u00a0 CUPE support workers deserve the same 5% increases that administrators are receiving on average.<\/p>\n

Against this rather comfy scenario for administrators at UBC, who want to leave well enough alone, undergraduates and graduate students, with 0% increases in TA wages, have struggled in or on the brink of poverty. \u00a0Students have been burdened with pronounced increases in inflation, tuition costs, supply costs (e.g., textbooks), housing costs, and debt over the decade, and it is getting worse in an economy that itself is top heavy and stalling with inflation, cutbacks, and debt.\u00a0 The vast majority of PhD students face the worst job market for University faculty employment in Canada in generations\u2014 since the Great Depression.\u00a0 Is there anything for the graduate students to lose by escalating job action? \u00a0There is everything to gain.<\/p>\n

Inflation or cost of living increases at about 2% per year with larger increases in the densely populated cities such as Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver.\u00a0 Tuition has risen<\/a> nearly each year over the decade, with the BC government now forced to regulate increases at 2% per year.\u00a0 The result is more than a doubling of tuition fees over the past decade<\/a>.\u00a0 Textbook costs have inflated<\/a> 10%-30% for some years during the decade.\u00a0 In BC, landlords likely added about 4% to student rental housing this year and can add about the same next year.\u00a0 Of course, these rises have been accompanied by unprecedented student debt<\/a>.\u00a0 Cumulative student debt across the country is now well over $15 billion with an average debt sentence for graduates in BC at $27,000 and rising.\u00a0 This potential sentence and a bleak job market for youth make implications profound for already poverty-stricken families.\u00a0 \u00a0Graduate students in BC leave with a bit more debt on average– $30,000 – $35,000.\u00a0 Fair enough some might say, students can readily sign for new credit cards with only 18% interest.<\/p>\n

The average age of the professoriate<\/a> in Canada is 50; in my Department, it\u2019s closer to 55.\u00a0 The writing on the wall is that faculty jobs have stagnated and are at an all time low.\u00a0 Month after month in Education, a PhD graduate will pick up the Careers section of University Affairs<\/a><\/em> or the CAUT Bulletin<\/em><\/a> and find the column under \u201cEducation\u201d and its related disciplines empty or with just a few openings across the entire country.\u00a0 In BC alone, an estimated 75 PhDs graduate from Faculties of Education each year.<\/p>\n

It is no wonder that the UBC AMS filed an Article #13 complaint to the United Nations<\/a> on 25 November 2009.\u00a0 The undergraduate students appealed that the BC government be held responsible for \u201cgross human rights violations\u201d in failing to control tuition, provide sufficient financial support, and provide adequate funding to post-secondary education.\u00a0 It is no wonder that the Federation of Post-Secondary Educators of BC sent a letter to the BC Minister of Advanced Education<\/a> on 7 September 2012. \u00a0The letter, co-signed by 24 supporters including the President of the Canadian Union of Public Employees-BC (CUPE) concluded: \u201cLike institutional Presidents, our various organizations see the continued underfunding at our institutions as a serious threat to not only local students and local communities, but also a serious undermining of BC\u2019s future.\u201d<\/p>\n

The extraordinary steps taken by students in Quebec<\/a> between February and August of this year will pay dividends for the student movement across the country.\u00a0 With models of direct democracy, the students managed to topple a government and win immediate concessions by the new government\u2014in its first day of office the PQ government cancelled the pending tuition hike and repealed an anti-protest law that curbed basic freedoms of expression.\u00a0 That\u2019s inspiring democratic action.\u00a0 Again, for UBC TAs, is there not everything to gain by escalating job action and moving from the classroom to the streets of campus, Vancouver, and Victoria?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Wednesday, 24 October,\u00a0CUPE 2278 teaching assistants at the University of British Columbia (UBC) will take a strike vote.\u00a0 For each and every one of the graduate students, this should be a \u2018no brainer\u2019 yes, to escalate labour action: Yes … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1527,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[406501,2251,2260,2265,2270,2271,2272,5038,2273,2275,2276],"tags":[1288960,1288961,1288964],"class_list":["post-9106","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bc-education","category-budgets-funding","category-job-market","category-organizing","category-solidarity","category-strikes","category-strikes-labor-disputes","category-student-movement","category-students","category-unions","category-working-conditions","tag-strikes-labor-disputes","tag-students","tag-working-conditions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/workplace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/workplace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/workplace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/workplace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1527"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/workplace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9106"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/workplace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9106\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9114,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/workplace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9106\/revisions\/9114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/workplace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/workplace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/workplace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}