On top of any agreements made in a Collective Agreement (CA), employees and employers also have certain rights and responsibilities in the workplace that are established by federal law. In these workplaces, the Union is responsible for representing employees at grievances (see below), arbitrations, and in contract negotiations with the employer.
Employer's Responsibilities
The University is responsible for:
- The safety of the workplace - they must ensure a physically and psychologically safe work environment for their employees.
- Ensuring that work assignments are clear and upheld by their employees.
- Alerting the Union of any changes that may violate the CA.
Member Rights
- All workers have the right to a safe workplace free of physical and emotional harm, such as discrimination and harassment. As a result, everyone has the right to refuse unsafe work without repercussions.
- You have the right to have a Union representative at disciplinary, grievance and overtime negotiation meetings.
Member Responsibilities
- Tracking your working hours - Members are expected to track their working hours to ensure they are not working beyond the allotted total hours in their contract, or the maximum hours allotted per week in your contract.
- Communicating with CUPE 3913 if you think there is a work-related issue of any kind. If we don’t know what’s going on, we can’t help. Speaking up doesn’t just help you, it helps every other current and future Member of the Union. See Key contacts to learn more about how to contact us.
Why do I need to track my hours?
Regardless of the assigned hours of your Work Assignment (see above), it is imperative that your work does not exceed that paid time. If you exceed your hours, it is your responsibility to alert the professor you are TA’ing for so that they can arrange to have your extra hours paid. However, if you don’t track your hours, you won’t know if you’ve exceeded your work agreement hours or if you’re being overworked (https://cupe.ca/overwork).
Additionally, it may be easy for your supervisor to challenge the number of hours you’ve worked, which may impact whether you are able to be paid for the extra time that you’ve put in toward your TAing duties. Tracking your hours also benefits your supervisor, so they know where to allocate hours in the future when planning their courses and whether the course needs more TAs.
How do I track my TA hours?
There’s no specific way to do this, though most TAs keep an Excel sheet with the date, time spent and description of the activities they undertook in that time. An example might look something like this:
Date
|
Hours Used
|
Activity
|
| Sept 9 |
1.5 hrs |
Initial meeting with professor to fill out and sign Work Agreement Form; training on how to grade assignments |
| Sept 10 |
1 hr |
Reading class materials |
| Sept 11 |
2 hrs |
Attending class |
| Sept 12 |
0.25 |
Responding to student emails |
| Sept 15 |
4 hrs |
Marking Assignment 1 |
| TOTAL |
8.75 hrs |
|
You can find a template tracking document on our website.
What happens when I run out of TAing hours?
If you realize that you are going to run out of hours, you must inform your supervisor. For example, if you only have two (2) hours left with fifteen (15) ten-page essays still to mark, it is unlikely that you will finish your work in the allotted time. Before you run out of hours, inform your supervisor that you only have a few hours left - they are responsible for reaching out to the department to ensure that any extra hours you work are paid at the Schedule B rate. Extra work cannot be paid if it is not tracked!