SFU teaching support union votes to strike, demands cost-of-living wage raise

The union that represents some 3,500 teaching support staff at Simon Fraser University (SFU) has voted in favour of taking strike action.

This comes as it continues to negotiate a new collective agreement with the university’s administrators.

With 94 per cent of the Teaching Support Staff Union (TSSU) voting in favour of job action, the union says its members have “made it clear that they are prepared to take action” to negotiate a “fair” collective agreement.

Including research assistants, teaching assistants, graduate facilitators, sessional instructors, and the like, the union’s previous collective agreement expired in April 2022.

Some union members are graduate students learning at the university. They are also pushing for the agreement to include a minimum funding package of $32,000 per year, plus tuition.

“RAs are the backbone of SFU’s research enterprise, which brought in $171.6 million in grants in 2021 alone. TAs form the first point of contact for many students, and Sessional Instructors teach nearly half of summer semester courses,” the union said in a statement Wednesday.

TSSU organizer and SFU research assistant Catherine Dubé says a large portion of the teaching and research work is done by union members, “but we can’t afford to eat or keep a roof over our heads.”

“I talk to members who are working full-time, yet need to go to the food bank, scrounge for free food, and take on multiple other jobs just to survive,” Dubé added.

The union says it will be working with its members in the coming days to organize job action, saying “it will continue as long as it takes.”

“There is no remaining choice, but to strike to make progress at the bargaining table,” the union said.

In a statement from SFU Wednesday, the university says it respects any union’s right to “perform job action … but we’re surprised and disappointed TSSU stopped the negotiation process,” adding there are over 200 items to be discussed.

The university says this is the second time the union has paused negotiations since bargaining began last year.

“The university and TSSU have made significant progress by discussing 405 of the 642 total proposals. However, there are still 237 outstanding proposals which have not yet been discussed,” SFU said.

SFU is “eager” to collaborate on a new collective agreement, it says and wants to fulfil its commitment to becoming a living wage employer.

“We also want to mitigate job action that would disrupt our students’ academic pursuits or adversely impact other members of the university community,” the university said.

SFU has now applied for mediation at the Labour Relations Board.

Editor’s note: this article has been updated to include a statement from SFU and to clarify the union represents teaching support staff.