VICTORY: TA Union Ratifies Collective Agreement After Authorizing Strike Action

On the week of September 21, Vancouver workers across the University of British Columbia (UBC) campus headed to the polls. Not the election polls, but for the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) 2278 strike vote. 

CUPE 2278 represents teaching assistants (TAs), graduate academic assistants (GAAs), tutors, markers, exam invigilators, and many other workers across campus. Over the past two years, they have been negotiating with university administration on various key issues, including wage increases, healthcare, GAA minimum pay, and many other key issues that are relevant to TA workers across campus. Bargaining with the university administration broke down over six key points. The six points, sourced from the updates from the CUPE 2278 bargaining blog are as follows: 

1. Employer paid healthcare — To quote the CUPE 2278 UBC Bargaining Blog “Our latest position included 75% employer-paid extended health and dental premiums. UBC has at no point objected to our costing in this proposed package. Through our discussions in mediation, it became clear that UBC’s position on healthcare is to instead refuse to provide a benefit to CUPE 2278 members that they provide to almost every other group of workers on campus.”
2. Fair wages for GAAs — CUPE 2278 explained that “[a]t mediation, UBC maintained that GAA wages should start at $27.50/hour, well below comparable TA wage rates.” GAAs have qualifications and duties comparable to Teaching Assistants, yet are paid less than TAs.
3. Protections for academic freedom — Instructors have the ability to include political material, including their opinions, while lecturing and within course material. This freedom is not extended to their TAs, who may face reprisal and repercussions if they express their politics within instruction. This provides a chilling effect that can weaken the bonds between students and their TAs.
4. Ending minimum funding clawbacks — Graduate research stipends are often funded with a combination of university research grants and TAships, where the former are often funded through research supervisors and principal investigators (PIs). Currently, if there is an increase in TA wages, supervisors and PIs have the ability to cut their grants to a graduate researcher to compensate, bringing the worker right back to their mandatory minimum. Fighting for this change will allow workers to, as a rule, actually keep their wages if they earn a TA pay increase.
5. Paid breaks for workers at the Centre for Accessibility.
6. TA to student ratio minimums.

To students across campus, the week of the strike vote showed that the union represents workers across campus that work directly with students and that it plays an important role in campus culture. There were various informational sessions in departments and faculties across campus (including the new graduate student orientation), a union barbeque outside a strike vote polling station, and lots of symbolic ephemera to show solidarity, varying from pins to stickers. The energy was excited and gregarious, where TAs across campus could share a hot dog and juice box over their participation in collective action. Rain or shine, pollsters were out across campus getting out the vote. In addition, the union encouraged more reticent departments to exercise their rights as union members to have their voices heard and join the fight, through focused outreach via relevant online channels used by TAs such as email, UBC TA forums, and Slack channels and encouragement through a chance for a small prize if members from these less represented departments also went to the polls.

TA workers authorized strike action with an overwhelming majority of 95 per cent, and a voter turnout of over 1,000 members. The union bargaining team did not put this show of solidarity and collective outrage to waste. Using the turnout as leverage, they were able to negotiate a tentative agreement —now ratified— in many key areas, with the UBC administration making several concessions. These include:

1. Healthcare wins — TAs across campus now have access to a healthcare plan that intends to bridge the gap between the student and instructor plans, and the university has committed to paying for 75% of the TA plan. This is available to TAs for the duration of their contracts.
2. GAAs now have a guaranteed minimum wage, the lowest TA position (UTA I) was eliminated, pushing all TAs into UTA II, and CUPE 2278 also won flat dollar wage increases over the next contract, all part of the union’s effort to increase pay equity within the union.
3. Clawbacks are now prevented for graduate students who earn over ~$16500/year from TAships; every dollar beyond this is a dollar they get to keep.
4. Paid breaks for exam invigilators and CfA workers (based on duration of shift).
5. Certain commitments in writing, including a commitment to investigating TA student ratios.

These wins were communicated through various avenues accessible to almost all union members, including through an impromptu hybrid town hall, in-person and online office hours, and word of mouth. This collective agreement was ratified on October 21 through an online vote, with a consensus of over 96 per cent and a voter turnout of over 900 CUPE 2278 members. The contract will take effect on September 1, 2027.

These are incredible gains. For instance, healthcare is now an item the union can continue pushing when previously UBC did not budge on the issue. The gap between the lowest earners and highest earners in the union has also shrunk significantly. However, there is still work to be done. For example, academic freedoms for TAs without facing employment discipline/backlash is still not available to TAs. Moreover, while these healthcare and clawback figures are a foot in the door, they are by no means the end of the fight for better conditions for TAs. 

Through a combination of these factors, CUPE 2278 has demonstrated their competency and ability to organize. They are capable of organizing for a strike vote, communicating to the general membership about negotiations, making good on worker leverage to gain huge wins, and putting plans in place for strike readiness if the tentative agreement was not ratified. This is in line with CUPE 2278’s long and strong history. Dating back to the late 70s, workers across campus legally unionized as the Association for Teaching Assistants in 1980, and incorporated into CUPE a few years later. Since then, the TA union has been negotiating with the university administration, and held two successful strikes before.

As young communists, we understand that the trade union struggle is an important aspect of the class struggle more broadly. The fight for better working conditions among union members has led workers to find solidarity across different industries, and take on a more international perspective on our common struggle. 

Congratulations to the CUPE 2278 workers for showing their collective power in their fight for respect and dignity against a UBC administration that would not budge. We see that even the threat of collective action from CUPE 2278 was enough to scare UBC into backing down, and understand that this serves as an important lesson on the power of collective action in the larger labour struggle. Solidarity with CUPE 2278 and all workers!