At our June 17th bargaining session, we presented our counterproposal on Article 11 (positions) and Article 15 (leaves). McGill presented their counterproposal on wages and union liberations.

McGill’s wage offer includes massive pay cuts (up to 50%!) for many workers. While marginal gains would be made for those working at minimum wage (who would see a 5.64% raise), the majority of our union members would actually face a pay decrease with only a 1.25% increase per year (which is a lot less than the cost of living increase).

This update covers two closely spaced bargaining sessions, held on May 6th and May 11th, where discussions focused heavily on positions, workload protections, and leaves. Across both sessions, your Unit 3 bargaining committee continued pushing for clearer job definitions, stronger accountability mechanisms around workload, and explicit protections against excessive preparatory work, unclear job expectations, and the erosion of leave rights through vague external references to labour standards legislation.

May 6, 2026 

The month of April has been unusual, with McGill cancelling multiple sessions as they needed time to go back and reevaluate their position. This followed March, where the Unit 3 bargaining committee tabled its monetary proposal and McGill responded with a wage offer that was not only a real wage pay cut, but furthermore, a pay scale that would allow your wages to be decided arbitrarily by the manager. First, we will cover our session with the McGill Writing Centre (MWC) on March 25th before discussing our latest (brief!) bargaining session on April 29 that saw McGill cave in to some of our demands at the table.

On Wednesday, March 18th, we met with McGill to receive their monetary response to our proposal, and it was bleak.

Regarding leaves and absences, McGill said they still need some time, so we expect to hear those items during one of the next two bargaining sessions. However, for non-monetary items, McGill separated their proposal into three distinct sections.

Starting with section one (articles 4 to 14), McGill proposed liberating 2 “average contracts” of 30 hours per semester. Liberations are commitments in a collective agreement that free up workers to be able to take on union work. In some unions this will just mean time off work, but in unions like ours it takes the form of money paid to the union that we distribute as honoraria among members taking on responsibility. AGSEM represents over 4000 workers, and it takes many people working daily to keep the employer accountable to established collective agreements, nevermind the bargaining of a new collective agreement. Without liberations, we would not be able to protect and advocate for our workers nearly as much.

With freezing rain battering Montréal, we met virtually with McGill on Wednesday to present our global offer, that is, an offer on every item we have not yet agreed upon. including monetary items! This was a unique session, as there was less back and forth between the employer and ourselves than usual. Rather, we walked them through our monetary proposal, to which they will respond next week.

So what exactly was in our proposal?

On February 18th, we met with McGill for the final bargaining session before we table our monetary clauses. It was a tense and frustrating session: as we approach tabling our monetary clauses on March 11 and we await McGill’s response on March 18, there is an increased sense of just how much is at stake. 

The session started off quite late as McGill needed additional time to prepare, but after about 50 minutes, the bargaining session began with trading proposals. To start this off, they provided us with their whole proposal for Article 11, a translation of Article 14, and a proposed workload form. The first key item discussed was positions at the McGill Writing Centre (MWC). Importantly, the University’s Article 11 proposal erased the difference in the MWC between tutors and writing group facilitators. These are very different jobs, and to consolidate them under one label would be detrimental to both tutors and writing group facilitators! McGill was receptive to this and we are addressing this in our proposal for March 11.

Our bargaining session with McGill on February 4th was a dense one. We made progress on several fronts, pushed hard on protections our members need, and clarified where McGill is still refusing to move. As we approach our discussion on monetary items, we’re entering a phase where the stakes get higher and the pressure on McGill increases. Non‑monetary items have revealed clear fault lines: where the employer is willing to modernize our working conditions, and where they are still resisting basic protections and transparency. Rest assured that our bargaining committee is on YOUR side – fighting for a contract that represents your working reality. 

On January 23rd, we met with McGill for the first new-year U3 bargaining session! After meeting with our members at the January Unit Assembly (UA), we let McGill know we are ready to move forward with article 14.05, and pushed them to better define the role of tutor as they see it.

Regarding Article 14.05, we spent a good number of sessions last semester arguing for the importance of a conflict of interest (COI) policy specific to Unit 3. No other unit of AGSEM runs the risk of grading other people in the same program and at the same academic level; invigilators do not grade, and teaching assistants are almost always attached to undergraduate courses. Unit 3, however, has a great number of undergraduate members who find themselves grading the courses their peers, friends, lovers, or exes might be in! Nobody wants that.

Once again, we have a double-session newsletter! On November 24th and December 2nd, we met for some intensive bargaining sessions with McGill. Not only did we sign on Article 2 (Definitions), but we had some insightful discussions with McGill on Article 11 (Positions). Job positions are a crucial part of this collective agreement, so it is worth explaining where we have come and where we hope to go in the new year.

Last Wednesday, our bargaining committee met with McGill to discuss a number of clauses: these include the subjects of the last newsletter, job postings (Article 12) and hiring/onboarding (Article 13), but also definitions (Article 2), and positions (Article 11). These last two were pretty big, but we gained quite a lot of ground during this session!

Notably, we have signed on article 12, and moved to the final steps on article 2. This means that job postings have been ironed out, and the article on definitions only needs to have its French translation reviewed before that can also be signed on.