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THURSDAY, MARCH 20, 2014

VOLUME 107, ISSUE 87

Low TA wages mean some turn to food bank Amy O’Kruk GAZETTE STAFF

TAS IN TROUBLE?

Graduate teaching assistants play a huge role in the facilitation of undergraduate education. However, their limited paid hours mean that some of them have had to turn to the food bank that the TA union has to provide for them. The collective agreement between Western and the TA union, Public Service Alliance of Canada Local 610, explores this wage further. It details that during the 2013–14 school year, a TA will earn a base salary of $4,550 per term, which equates to 140 hours of work. Additionally, they are granted a lump sum ranging from $67 to $1,345 depending on hours per week worked. Siobhan Watters, the activism chair for the TA union, has firsthand experience with TAs who are having trouble pursuing their studies and simultaneously supporting themselves. She’s in charge of the food bank program set up for them. Watters stated that over the past year, the food bank program has had to increase its budget. “Now that in the past couple of years there’s been an effort to make the food bank fund more visible, it’s been maxed out,” Watters said. “Last year our budget of $6,000 was completely exhausted and this year it was exhausted well before my term was over. Now we’ve actually increased the fund to $11,000 and we’ll see at the end of the year if it gets maxed out again.” Kevin Godbout, president of the Society of Graduate Students, stated that in Ontario, the poverty line sits at around $20,000 annually. He elaborated that graduate students with a minimum funding package as TAs are making about $12,000. Godbout explained that if calculated, the hourly rate seems generous — it sits at around $30 per hour. However there are other factors to consider.

· Teaching assistants are paid about $30 an hour, but are limited to a maximum of 10 hours a week of work · Western says they are forced to not pay for more than 10 hours by the Ontario government · Many work more hours in order to fulfill their duties · Western says the TA program is designed so that 10 hours is all that is needed · Some TAs are forced to use a food bank that is provided by the TA union · The budget for the food bank has been maxed out the past few years and will be nearly doubling next year, to $11,000

Courtesy of London Food Bank

“If you break it down, you can’t work more than 10 hours a week and you don’t work in the summer,” Godbout said “There’s a way of presenting this that says that TAs make a very generous hourly wage, but their actual take home money is part-time wages. They have fulltime expenses because they’re here all year doing work but they don’t take home very much.” Alan Weedon, the vice-provost academic planning, policy and faculty at Western, responded to

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the concern that TAs are limited by the 10 hours that they can work per week. “It used to be the case that the Ontario government would not allow us to employ TAs for more than 10 hours a week,” Weedon said. “They took away that regulation but in a funny way — they told us that we won’t have that as a regulation but we expect you to have a policy that they won’t teach more than 10 hours, because it will slow them down too much.”

· The current budget can feed about 120 people per year

Weedon added that the TA program is designed so that students’ needs can be delivered in 10 hours. He said the fact that some TAs want to spend more than 10 hours to do a better job is nice, but it’s not expected of them. Weedon elaborated that graduate students who are TAs also need to graduate. Spending too much time teaching will slow down their studies and eventually cost them more in terms of tuition and forgone income, he explained.

Watters, however argued that a union shouldn’t have to feel the need to provide members with basic living costs. “It’s obviously a crying shame that we need to have a food bank fund and that a union that is supposed to fight for higher wages, labour rights and worker solidarity has to step up and fill in for this primary, essential human need,” Watters said. “It’s just saying again and again that we are not paid an adequate wage.”

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