January 8, 2024
THE VARSITY The University of Toronto’s Student Newspaper Since 1880
Vol. CXLIV, No. 13
Graduate RAs at Daniels call out widespread mistreatment, demand USW representation Campaigners presented a supermajority petition to the dean faculty on Thursday Georgia Kelly Business & Labour Editor
Masters students at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design have launched a campaign calling on administrators and faculty to end allegedly unethical employment conditions for research assistants. Students’ objections include drastically low pay rates, pressure to underlog their hours, and a lack of respect for students’ boundaries between their working hours and personal lives. On November 30, Izzy Mink, Bhavika Sharma, and Jessica Palmer — masters students at Daniels who organized the campaign — were joined by fellow Daniels masters students to deliver a petition outlining the campaign’s demands to the Dean’s office and to various faculty heads. According to the organizers, the petition includes signatures from 75 per cent of the graduate students at
Daniels; organizers also noted that 99.6 per cent of the students they approached agreed to sign the petition. The campaign’s two central demands are as follows. First, faculty should be employing all students doing research assistant (RA) work through “official Research Assistant contracts,” which are protected by a collective agreement between the United Steel Workers (USW) Local 1998 and U of T’s central administration. The campaign defines the work of RAs as “any job taken to assist a professor,” excluding Teaching Assistants’ (TA) work, whether or not the worker is officially designated as an RA. Secondly, and more simply, the campaign demands that all graduate students doing research assistant work should receive at least $25 an hour. Mink, Sharma, and Palmer noted in an interview with The Varsity that they prioritize the pay increase, whether or not their demand for USW representation is successful.
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As of the time of publication, the campaign has not yet received a response from U of T. The university declined The Varsity’s request for comment on the students’ demands. The complaints The 14-student group occupied the Dean’s office for a few minutes after they delivered the petition and shared stories of their mistreatment as employees. Mink shared that she started her Work Study position in summer 2022, and received $15 an hour as compensation. “I thought it was really a great opportunity,” she said. Later, Mink described that she attended a conference where she met two architecture students, which she characterized as essentially working the same job, at Toronto Metropolitan University and Dalhousie University, respectively. “One was making $26 an hour, one was making $28 an hour,” she recounted.
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In an interview with The Varsity, Mink explained that the Work Study program essentially means professors are not bound by USW 1998’s collective agreement with the university administration for RA positions. This collective agreement doesn’t represent Work Study students. A Work Study position is specifically tied to a student’s Degree Program, and is largely funded by the university department offering the position. Since these positions are considered part of students’ education, they are also exempt from Ontario’s Employment Standards Act, which sets out basic conditions for workers hired through typical employers, such as vacation pay. Palmer recounted to The Varsity that she’d been told by fellow students that their professors would encourage them to log fewer hours than they had actually worked, “saying, you know, ‘are you sure that took you 15 hours? Because it took so-and-so ten hours.’” Continued on page 7
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