2025 Bargaining Proposals
we are bargaining for dignity in labour and learning
The contract committee has developed the following bargaining proposals under four broad categories, focusing on dignity of our labour and dignity of our students’ learning. Our working conditions are UBC’s learning conditions!
Check out the bargaining proposals, then take the survey!
Category 1: Dignity in healthcare and wellbeing 😷
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Currently, CUPE 2278 members do not have access to an employer-sponsored health plan. This leaves members with large financial burdens when their health conditions are not covered by the limited assistance offered through the AMS/GSS health plan. We think members should have access to an employer-sponsored health plan (currently UBC offers employees access to the UBC Extended Health Plan) to even out financial inequities between members with significant health expenses.
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The Medical Services Plan (MSP) of British Columbia (BC) is a mandatory public health insurance program for anyone who resides in BC for six months or longer. The MSP is essential for accessing healthcare services available to all BC residents. Currently, international students pay $75 per month to access this service. This magnifies the inequities between domestic and international students. Other academic worker unions (e.g. TSSU at SFU) have fought and succeeded in getting their universities to cover this cost for members and our members deserve the same.
Category 2: Dignity in cost of living and affordability 💵
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For employees who are enrolled at UBC, paying tuition is a precondition for employment. This means that part of our salaries are effectively re-absorbed by the university. This is the case even for graduate students who may not be enrolled in any classes. The various fees we are required to pay on top of tuition (UPASS, AMS, and GSS fees) further decrease the real amount we take home at the end of the day. Our members’ incomes generally fall far short of the amount needed for a decent standard of living in Vancouver, which rose to approximately $60,000 per year in 2024. As the cost of living crisis continues to worsen, UBC should cover its employees’ tuition and student fees so they can live with dignity.
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Currently, the pay scale for teaching assistants has five tiers depending on student status and TA experience at UBC. The difference in yearly pay between undergraduate and graduate TAs can be as much as $7,106.96 on a full TAship. We hope to create a simplified payscale that will reduce or eliminate this inequity.
Wages for TAs should depend on the nature of the job, the tasks and skills involved. Differences in pay based only on student status (undergraduate vs. graduate) are arbitrary, and undergraduates and graduates who are performing the same duties deserve to receive equal wages for equal work.
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We are asking for student workers to be brought to the same level as staff and expand access to non-health benefits that staff at UBC already receive. Currently staff have access to additional non-health benefits, like a staff email and parking. However, anytime a student has a staff position, their status as a student overrides their status as staff and erodes these benefits. This means that student workers are not eligible to receive the full suite of staff benefits. For example, an undergraduate teaching assistant (student staff), pays 4x the cost for limited parking on campus compared to professors.
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We shouldn’t have to put off getting a retirement pension plan room just because we are students! We propose that UBC allow us to contribute to the staff pension plan. And we want the university to match these contributions. By allowing members to contribute to long term plans, UBC is committing to aiding members in achieving financial security.
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We aim to mitigate cost to members by proposing a rent cap, increased access to housing for first year student workers, guaranteed housing for continuing student workers living on campus already, and/or an employer provided housing subsidy. Cost of living in Vancouver is extremely high. UBC has raised housing costs beyond inflation in previous years. We are calling on UBC to increase access to housing, reduce the burden of costs, and prevent housing insecurity.
Category 3: Dignity in community and international solidarity ✊
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Academic freedom protections ensure that members are safe to voice their opinions freely in the workplace – for instance, in lab sections, tutorials, and when delivering guest lectures. Academic freedom has been outlined as one of UBC’s five core values. But there are presently few weak protections in our collective agreement concerning academic freedom. Introducing further protections would ensure that our members can fully exercise – and have recourse against infringements of – this freedom.
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The teaching and research missions of the University should support the public good, human rights, and sustainability for future generations. Our members should not face workplace consequences for refusing to engage in work that is antithetical to these aims. This includes, but is not limited to, ensuring that our members can refuse work that is complicit in human rights violations, as well as collaborating with institutions complicit in such violations. It also includes ensuring that our members can refuse work that is funded by or in collaboration with fossil fuel and natural resource extraction industries and weapons manufacturers.
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The University should work collaboratively with the Union to create a campus climate that promotes equity and justice by limiting policing activity, culture and presence. This includes reducing reliance on campus security and the RCMP by providing de-escalation and crisis response training for all campus members. Interactions with the police and campus security should be minimized for our members and everyone in our campus community.
Category 4: Dignity in teaching, learning, and working conditions ✏️
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This bargaining proposal would be about getting language that guarantees a minimum allotment of hours for class sections of a certain size, number of student contact hours, or job duties. Currently, Teaching Assistantships can be any arbitrary number of hours. Over the past few years, we’ve seen departments reducing the number of hours for TAships in the same courses where there is the same amount of work – but now fewer hours to get it done. We have also seen TAships get broken down into smaller pieces. Our members need guaranteed hours to ensure stability and consistency in their positions.
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Professional development is an important part of teaching and academic work. This proposal is for paid TA training for all workers that includes: (1) pedagogy and teaching strategies, (2) classroom management and de-escalation strategies, (3) Equity, diversity and inclusion in the classroom, and (4) mental health intervention and resources. We are also proposing an employer-paid professional development fund for ongoing training for all unionized work.
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The Collective Agreement protections from discrimination help protect our members from unjust treatment in the workplace by allowing members to access the grievance process when discrimination occurs. We want to expand the existing anti-discrimination protections listed in our Collective Agreement to explicitly enshrine further rights and protections for things like caste, citizenship status, and political activity.
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Artificial intelligence models trained on human data have been shown to perpetuate bias and discriminate against marginalized groups. The use of AI systems for resume screening, hiring, scheduling, or evaluating job performance can magnify existing inequity in the workplace. Additionally, the use of generative AI marking tools could threaten to replace bargaining unit work and threaten the integrity of the learning environment. No workers or students should interface with or provide data to train AI models without prior knowledge and consent. We should have a say in how AI is integrated into the hiring process, learning environment, and our jobs.