AGSEM Archive — Posts from the old website

On June 6th, 2024, an autonomous group of students peacefully occupied the James Administration building at McGill University in the name of Palestinian liberation. In response, university administration authorized the presence of the Service de Police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM) on campus and granted them permission to enter the James Administration building. The police response included riot police (Section du support et interventions spécialisées or SIS).

The police unequivocally displayed excessive force against protestors. Students and community members, including elderly people, were subject to pepper spray and tear gas. The brutality, documented in many independent videos, included the SPVM officers shooting tear gas canisters directly at protestors. Officers used riot shields and batons to beat protestors who had fallen to the ground while fleeing, resulting in multiple students sustaining serious injuries, including concussions after taking blows to the head. Some fallen protestors were kicked by police.

The Association of McGill Graduate Students Employed at McGill (AGSEM) wants to express its deepest words of solidarity with the Association of McGill Professors of Law (AMPL) currently on an unlimited strike as of April 24, 2024.

After 18 months of negotiation, it is deplorable that it has come to this point but unfortunately, we can fully relate to AMPL’s cause as it seems to be an acceptable avenue for McGill to refuse negotiating with their employee groups in an efficient way to prevent striking to happen. While AMPL pledged that the issues separating them to the employer are not complicated, the University still refused to give them replies to their proposals on compensation, working environment, one-pension-for-all, and others. McGill knows what it takes to end the strike and AGSEM urges McGill to come to the negotiating table with a reasonable offer that will meet AMPL’s demands

Monday 15 April 2024

***Content warning:***this newsletter describes AGSEM’s negotiations with McGill around policies on harassment, discrimination, and sexual violence.

In the evening of Monday April 15th, 2024, after eight months of negotiations for a new contract, AGSEM and McGill reached a Tentative Agreement. Whether this Tentative Agreement will be ratified and become the new Collective Agreement is entirely in the hands of TAs.

This coming Thursday, April 18th at 5pm we will be holding a Ratification Assembly, open to all who have held a TA position in the last 12 months, at which the Bargaining Committee will present the tentative agreement and members will decide whether to accept it or not. While we will go into more detail then, we did want to share an overview of what is in this tentative agreement.

April 7, 2024

Negotiations

McGill’s latest email is their first public statement on negotiations. We have been publishing detailed newsletters on bargaining since September, and we encourage all curious about bargaining to consult them here.

We all know that McGill is a top school in Canada, and frames itself that way when recruiting students. It pays high level admins salaries competitive with schools like University of Toronto and University of British Columbia. But when it comes to paying TAs, McGill suddenly only cares about the Québec market.

Read more

Tuesday 2 April, 2024

Nada, Nick, and Dallas from the Bargaining Committee join the picket line on TAs’ first day of strike!

Content warning: this newsletter describes AGSEM’s negotiations with McGill around policies on harassment, discrimination, and sexual violence. It also discusses instances of transphobia.

On Tuesday, April 2nd, 2024, AGSEM and McGill met for their 20th negotiations session, the second since the beginning of TAs’ strike last week, and the sixth session in conciliation. As usual, the bargaining team was joined by rank-and-file workers in the room.

Since the start of the TA strike, AGSEM has tried to negotiate access to @mcgill.ca employee emails with McGill Human Resources. Members need this access for important emails regarding publications, jobs, travel, and immigration, and also store their research on the One Drive. These are not simply employee emails, and the employer’s heavy-handed reaction to freeze employee email accounts once again shows their lack of understanding of our roles here at the university as student employees.

2024-03-24 - Letter Regarding the Employer’s Application of 109.1 c.pdf

24 March 2024

Mrs. Diana Dutton

Interim Vice-President (Administration and Finance) McGill University

Object: Agreement regarding s. 109.1 ss. c of the Labour Code

Mrs. Dutton,

Recently, the McGill administration has suggested that graduate Teaching Assistants who also hold other forms of employment on campus (i.e., Research Assistants, Course Lecturers, Invigilators, AMUSE-Casuals, graders, etc.) will invariably be suspended or terminated from their other positions should TAs go on strike, as stated in the document entitled “Frequently asked questions Labour dispute AGSEM – TAs”.

AGSEM calls on McGill to stop asserting their dubious and self-serving legal interpretations as fact and instead focus on coming to the bargaining table to help us find a fair deal.

Montreal, Sunday, March 24, 2024

Over the past few weeks, McGill has focused more of their attention toward undermining a TA strike than preventing it. McGill has made an impressive array of arguments to support their position that, in the case of a strike, course supervisors have the responsibility to do the work normally done by TAs. In contrast, AGSEM has consistently asserted that TA work, as defined by their workload forms, belongs to TAs.

2024-03-22_-_Cease_and_desist_AGSEM_to_McGill.pdf

Object: CEASE AND DESIST Association of Graduate Students Employed at McGill (AGSEM) N/Réf. :M-01084-0033 EEJ

Mrs. Dutton,

We represent the interest of the Association of Graduate Students Employed at McGill - CSN (hereafter “AGSEM”). AGSEM has informed us that McGill University (hereafter “the Employer”) has sent directives to Faculty Deans, which have been transmitted to various instructors (Professors, Course lecturers or Faculty lecturers), regarding the Employer’s position relating to measures to take in case of a strike by Teachers’ assistants (TAs) members of AGSEM’s bargaining unit.

Tuesday 19 March, 2024

AGSEM TA Bargaining Committee and regular members attending the negotiation session.

It has been two weeks since AGSEM and McGill last met for negotiations—and what an eventful two weeks it has been!

During the week of March 11th, teaching assistants (TAs) held a strike vote over three assemblies**.** A strike mandate gives the union the power to call a strike at any time based on the progress of negotiations. And the results of those votes were clear: TAs showed up in record-shattering numbers and voted 87.5% in favour of a strike mandate.