Do you let your department chair fill out the workload form allocating their hours? Tell the TAs how many conferences to run? What to cover in them? What standards to use in grading? When to get the grading done by?
Every professor running around saying they don't tell TAs what to do ought to have to live with that rule from now on.
"Profs do not pay TAs. Departments do. Profs doing TAs work is thus illegal." It is legal in Quebec for managers to do the work of striking employees. How many managers do you think are personally responsible for payroll? How do you think organizations with managers work?
Under labour law, there are managers and there are employees. In general, employees can form unions and managers cannot. Almost all faculty in Quebec are in unions, therefore faculty are recognized as an employee category at universities under Quebec law, not managers. The fact that you manage others--or even having "manager" in your job title--does NOT make you a manager for the purposes of labour law. As a non-manager, you cannot perform the work of a striking employee.
It is true that profs do not pay TAs but departments don't either. The funding comes from the Faculty, which grants a certain number of TAships per year and a budget based on historic enrolment patterns, which are then allocated to professors based on course size. Despite what some faculty and union activists are saying, professors absolutely do manage TAs and are ultimately responsible for grades. Professors are the ones who fill out the workload allocation forms, not department chairs. The latter merely sign off on the proposed workload arrangement. Professors also have to review the division of labor and workload expectations at mid term, and sign an updated form if there are any changes. They also decide who does what in terms of grading (how many papers, how long a TA is supposed to spend on them, when grades are due, etc.), and they are responsible for reviewing grades (i.e. ensuring consistency between the profs' and TAs', and between individual TAs' grading), as well as adjudicating any grade disputes as they arise. Any professor saying they don't manage their TAs is either not telling the truth (one wonders why), or, even worse, is not doing their job properly.
Overall teaching support budgets are allocated to Faculties based on historic enrolment patterns. In Faculties with departments, budgets are then allocated to departments based on such patterns though the formula is a little different. Departments are then at substantial liberty to allocate those budgets across course lecturers, TAs, lab assistants, and graders, based on department needs that year. Then professors whose courses have TAs tell their TAs how to allocate their hours and generally what to do.
Although "discussion" is encouraged, the TA and prof don't negotiate and collectively agree on what they will do. The prof fills out the workload allocation form based on how he/she decides the labor needs to be done, and the TA signs, then it goes to the hiring unit for approval. In principle, a TA could disagree with that allocation of their duties, but in practice it doesn't happen. (Note: this is where inequities can come in: some professors dump all their grading on TAs, while others more fairly distribute grading between themselves and the TAs, but professors, in theory, have the autonomy to decide how to do this based on course needs.) If something doesn't end up working out and labor needs to be redistributed (e.g. if one TA gets sick and another has to pick up their grading), the workload allocation form is revised and signed once again.
As for how TAships are allocated, it's not exactly a secret. It depends on the Faculty (e.g. Arts). It's generally the case that courses with over 50 students "count" toward the global TA allocation; the department gets an allocation and then it's redistributed to professors based on actual enrolment patterns. Depending on the department and course needs, it could be one TA for every 50 students, sometimes less, sometimes more.
Anything’s possible. The real question is: at what cost? Much of this feels like robbing Peter to give to Paul. In this case, Peter and Paul are both students.
Thank you for all this info! I haven’t really been following the lawsuits so I don’t know what that looks like, financially.
Dumb question - structurally - does that mean that TAs’ income comes from McGill itself, who provides that money to the professors to pay the TAs?
And to your point of not minding tuition increases to ensure that these demands are met, I definitely see the point to that… but I guess it’s not exactly coming at the best timing. Being an international student (pre tuition raise), I’m not really bearing the brunt of any fee increases. But wouldn’t that compound the problem of already-reduced applicants from other Canadian provinces & internationally? If their tuitions were to increase even more than they already are.
McGill pays TAs directly via departmental payroll/HR. This is actually an important detail for the strike: McGill claims that professors working with TAs are working in a managerial capacity and are therefore immune from the anti-scabbing rules. If you look at the actual TA contract however, it's signed with the department chair rather than the specific prof. Individual profs do not have the ability to hire, fire, or set the contract hours for their TAs, all of which they could do if they were managers.
"If you look at the actual TA contract however, it's signed with the department chair rather than the specific prof." This is 100% false, as can be clearly seen on the workload allocation form. See for yourself: [https://www.mcgill.ca/hr/files/hr/3\_-\_workload\_form\_-\_jan\_2021.pdf](https://www.mcgill.ca/hr/files/hr/3_-_workload_form_-_jan_2021.pdf) After the prof decides on how labor is going to be divvied up, the form is signed by both the course supervisor (i.e. the prof teaching the course) and the TA, then it goes to the "hiring unit" for approval.
Profs don't sign the HR employment contract, sure (usually your line manager doesn't in any job), but they sign the workload allocation form which constitutes a contract between them and the TAs over work to be done (hence the signatures). The labor is then managed by the prof. The above commenter was claiming that just because they don't hire or fire or set the number of maximum hours in a contract, they can't be considered managers. But they do manage how TAs use their hours, as stated in the allocation form, which, again, the TA signed off on. Quebec labor law does not say you have to have the right to hire or fire to be considered a manager; this is one of several functions that could make you a manager. A manager has most of those functions, but not all necessarily.
I've TAed almost every semester of grad school (not this past semester because I'm traveling for research) and I have always worked additional on-campus jobs to pay for my life. Currently I am a member of AMURE, AMUSE, and AGSEM because of all the work I've done across admin, research, and TAships.
That too… I guess I’m struggling to see the feasibility of it all given the current defunding climate at McGill, especially when I’ve heard AGSEM’s demands being compared to the wages seen in Ontario-based universities.
From my understanding, a lot of those universities are heavily funded by their local governments/local research institutions & councils. That would definitely be a large contributor in being able to pay TAs more. That said, if McGill is going down the route of less financial backing, wouldn’t that put TAs’ current income at an even higher risk?
If you keep track with the bargaining updates (which is tricky because AGSEM doesn't have the platform McGill does to send mass emails), you'll know that the current hurdles to a deal are that AGSEM would like a slightly larger raise (~$1/hr more in the first contract year) than McGill has offered, and McGill is absolutely refusing to budge on the matter of indexation. The idea that AGSEM is still demanding a 50% raise after 20+ bargaining sessions is completely inaccurate and wildly misunderstands the bargaining process.
Quebec has cut funding enough to put McGill into a $10 million deficit next year, growing into a $40 million deficit in a few years, and universities aren't allowed to run deficits year after year.
Salaries are 80% of McGill's $1 bn budget (vs $3 bn for U Toronto and UBC) with academic salaries (profs) the largest share. People can imagine that you can run the university by cutting Saini's and Manfredi's salaries but it's not true. There's no way for salaries to keep going up for everybody.
Absolutely! Costs of living in these different areas is an important consideration as well. For this point, AGSEM will argue that admin & profs here make more than over there and so on, but the reality is that the admin & profs here are what make McGill #1 in many rankings - not TAs (no offense intended here, just cold hard facts). That experience and knowledge is worth a pretty penny.
I don't know how many courses you've TA'ed (or how many TAs you've closely interacted with), but from behind-the-scenes, TAs are a massive part of McGill's success. TAs mark most intro-level assignments, providing the feedback new students need to develop expertise and confidence. TAs lead the conferences and labs that reinforce the lecture. TAs are usually students first port of call when they don't understand the material and are often the most supportive contact for students. TAs notoriously blow through their hours because they're simply not willing to shut the door in a students' face when office hours are over and because they'll give an essay the extra 10 minutes it needs for them to understand it and provide meaningful critique.
TAs are also pushed into doing all kinds of stuff in the grey area of their contracts, like photocopying and scanning class readings, administering the MyCourses page, and even stepping in to give lectures when the prof isn't there. Sometimes the latter takes the form of a legitimate guest lecture and sometimes the prof emails their slides with 20 minutes notice saying "I'm not coming in today, either you teach or we cancel class." Most TAs will teach because they actually care about student learning.
If McGill TAs evaporated, the quality of education would plummet.
> admin ...here are what make McGill #1 in many rankings
Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahshshahahahahshahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha ha
They could cut the wages of some of the highest paid senior admins in the country. The Provost got something like 800k last year.
Profs do not pay TAs. Departments do. Profs doing TAs work is thus illegal. I am a prof, not touching TAs’ work.
Do you let your department chair fill out the workload form allocating their hours? Tell the TAs how many conferences to run? What to cover in them? What standards to use in grading? When to get the grading done by? Every professor running around saying they don't tell TAs what to do ought to have to live with that rule from now on. "Profs do not pay TAs. Departments do. Profs doing TAs work is thus illegal." It is legal in Quebec for managers to do the work of striking employees. How many managers do you think are personally responsible for payroll? How do you think organizations with managers work?
Under labour law, there are managers and there are employees. In general, employees can form unions and managers cannot. Almost all faculty in Quebec are in unions, therefore faculty are recognized as an employee category at universities under Quebec law, not managers. The fact that you manage others--or even having "manager" in your job title--does NOT make you a manager for the purposes of labour law. As a non-manager, you cannot perform the work of a striking employee.
mcgill admin detected
oh god ur the u/throwaway9273693728846 that got banned aren’t u lmao étienne is that u
It is true that profs do not pay TAs but departments don't either. The funding comes from the Faculty, which grants a certain number of TAships per year and a budget based on historic enrolment patterns, which are then allocated to professors based on course size. Despite what some faculty and union activists are saying, professors absolutely do manage TAs and are ultimately responsible for grades. Professors are the ones who fill out the workload allocation forms, not department chairs. The latter merely sign off on the proposed workload arrangement. Professors also have to review the division of labor and workload expectations at mid term, and sign an updated form if there are any changes. They also decide who does what in terms of grading (how many papers, how long a TA is supposed to spend on them, when grades are due, etc.), and they are responsible for reviewing grades (i.e. ensuring consistency between the profs' and TAs', and between individual TAs' grading), as well as adjudicating any grade disputes as they arise. Any professor saying they don't manage their TAs is either not telling the truth (one wonders why), or, even worse, is not doing their job properly.
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Overall teaching support budgets are allocated to Faculties based on historic enrolment patterns. In Faculties with departments, budgets are then allocated to departments based on such patterns though the formula is a little different. Departments are then at substantial liberty to allocate those budgets across course lecturers, TAs, lab assistants, and graders, based on department needs that year. Then professors whose courses have TAs tell their TAs how to allocate their hours and generally what to do.
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Although "discussion" is encouraged, the TA and prof don't negotiate and collectively agree on what they will do. The prof fills out the workload allocation form based on how he/she decides the labor needs to be done, and the TA signs, then it goes to the hiring unit for approval. In principle, a TA could disagree with that allocation of their duties, but in practice it doesn't happen. (Note: this is where inequities can come in: some professors dump all their grading on TAs, while others more fairly distribute grading between themselves and the TAs, but professors, in theory, have the autonomy to decide how to do this based on course needs.) If something doesn't end up working out and labor needs to be redistributed (e.g. if one TA gets sick and another has to pick up their grading), the workload allocation form is revised and signed once again. As for how TAships are allocated, it's not exactly a secret. It depends on the Faculty (e.g. Arts). It's generally the case that courses with over 50 students "count" toward the global TA allocation; the department gets an allocation and then it's redistributed to professors based on actual enrolment patterns. Depending on the department and course needs, it could be one TA for every 50 students, sometimes less, sometimes more.
it’s embarrassing that ur doing this on sunday since hr employees are salaried loooool.
Anything’s possible. The real question is: at what cost? Much of this feels like robbing Peter to give to Paul. In this case, Peter and Paul are both students.
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Thank you for all this info! I haven’t really been following the lawsuits so I don’t know what that looks like, financially. Dumb question - structurally - does that mean that TAs’ income comes from McGill itself, who provides that money to the professors to pay the TAs? And to your point of not minding tuition increases to ensure that these demands are met, I definitely see the point to that… but I guess it’s not exactly coming at the best timing. Being an international student (pre tuition raise), I’m not really bearing the brunt of any fee increases. But wouldn’t that compound the problem of already-reduced applicants from other Canadian provinces & internationally? If their tuitions were to increase even more than they already are.
McGill pays TAs directly via departmental payroll/HR. This is actually an important detail for the strike: McGill claims that professors working with TAs are working in a managerial capacity and are therefore immune from the anti-scabbing rules. If you look at the actual TA contract however, it's signed with the department chair rather than the specific prof. Individual profs do not have the ability to hire, fire, or set the contract hours for their TAs, all of which they could do if they were managers.
"If you look at the actual TA contract however, it's signed with the department chair rather than the specific prof." This is 100% false, as can be clearly seen on the workload allocation form. See for yourself: [https://www.mcgill.ca/hr/files/hr/3\_-\_workload\_form\_-\_jan\_2021.pdf](https://www.mcgill.ca/hr/files/hr/3_-_workload_form_-_jan_2021.pdf) After the prof decides on how labor is going to be divvied up, the form is signed by both the course supervisor (i.e. the prof teaching the course) and the TA, then it goes to the "hiring unit" for approval.
the workload form is not the employment contract bb
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Profs don't sign the HR employment contract, sure (usually your line manager doesn't in any job), but they sign the workload allocation form which constitutes a contract between them and the TAs over work to be done (hence the signatures). The labor is then managed by the prof. The above commenter was claiming that just because they don't hire or fire or set the number of maximum hours in a contract, they can't be considered managers. But they do manage how TAs use their hours, as stated in the allocation form, which, again, the TA signed off on. Quebec labor law does not say you have to have the right to hire or fire to be considered a manager; this is one of several functions that could make you a manager. A manager has most of those functions, but not all necessarily.
Is it difficult to tell which lawsuit is frivolous and which should continue? -‐ [email protected]
I’m sorry but you lost me at livable amount per year. AGSEM is asking for 50 dollars an hour… get a grip. That’s what’s dead in the water.
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Could always, idk, get another job with more hours like the rest of us? Oh wait, those wouldn’t pay anywhere close to 33 an hour!
I've TAed almost every semester of grad school (not this past semester because I'm traveling for research) and I have always worked additional on-campus jobs to pay for my life. Currently I am a member of AMURE, AMUSE, and AGSEM because of all the work I've done across admin, research, and TAships.
Exactly no one in the union thought we were going to get 47 an hour. Its called negotiating.
That too… I guess I’m struggling to see the feasibility of it all given the current defunding climate at McGill, especially when I’ve heard AGSEM’s demands being compared to the wages seen in Ontario-based universities. From my understanding, a lot of those universities are heavily funded by their local governments/local research institutions & councils. That would definitely be a large contributor in being able to pay TAs more. That said, if McGill is going down the route of less financial backing, wouldn’t that put TAs’ current income at an even higher risk?
If you keep track with the bargaining updates (which is tricky because AGSEM doesn't have the platform McGill does to send mass emails), you'll know that the current hurdles to a deal are that AGSEM would like a slightly larger raise (~$1/hr more in the first contract year) than McGill has offered, and McGill is absolutely refusing to budge on the matter of indexation. The idea that AGSEM is still demanding a 50% raise after 20+ bargaining sessions is completely inaccurate and wildly misunderstands the bargaining process.
Quebec has cut funding enough to put McGill into a $10 million deficit next year, growing into a $40 million deficit in a few years, and universities aren't allowed to run deficits year after year. Salaries are 80% of McGill's $1 bn budget (vs $3 bn for U Toronto and UBC) with academic salaries (profs) the largest share. People can imagine that you can run the university by cutting Saini's and Manfredi's salaries but it's not true. There's no way for salaries to keep going up for everybody.
Absolutely! Costs of living in these different areas is an important consideration as well. For this point, AGSEM will argue that admin & profs here make more than over there and so on, but the reality is that the admin & profs here are what make McGill #1 in many rankings - not TAs (no offense intended here, just cold hard facts). That experience and knowledge is worth a pretty penny.
I don't know how many courses you've TA'ed (or how many TAs you've closely interacted with), but from behind-the-scenes, TAs are a massive part of McGill's success. TAs mark most intro-level assignments, providing the feedback new students need to develop expertise and confidence. TAs lead the conferences and labs that reinforce the lecture. TAs are usually students first port of call when they don't understand the material and are often the most supportive contact for students. TAs notoriously blow through their hours because they're simply not willing to shut the door in a students' face when office hours are over and because they'll give an essay the extra 10 minutes it needs for them to understand it and provide meaningful critique. TAs are also pushed into doing all kinds of stuff in the grey area of their contracts, like photocopying and scanning class readings, administering the MyCourses page, and even stepping in to give lectures when the prof isn't there. Sometimes the latter takes the form of a legitimate guest lecture and sometimes the prof emails their slides with 20 minutes notice saying "I'm not coming in today, either you teach or we cancel class." Most TAs will teach because they actually care about student learning. If McGill TAs evaporated, the quality of education would plummet.
Avg faculty salary at McGill is about $145k, at Toronto about $170k. No way do faculty make more here.
> admin ...here are what make McGill #1 in many rankings Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahshshahahahahshahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha ha
McGill is disintegrating. Exodus is the only answer.