In a statement on Instagram, the Teaching Assistants Union of Memorial University claimed that MUN “violated the Collective Agreement and the Newfoundland and Labrador Labour Standards Act.” This comes after the university froze payments for a handful of paid graduate employees at the Grenfell Campus.
Claims there were issues with contracts
Kieran Knoll, president of TAUMUN, says the union began getting information back in July about discrepancies regarding its members’ contracts and work experiences at the Grenfell campus.
According to Knoll, they observed that “Grenfell contracts were being administered improperly.” Teaching assistants were reportedly given timesheets for the “purpose of being paid, which is not actually how assistants are paid. They’re paid at a biweekly rate… the same paycheque throughout the contract for the purposes of stability, and unfortunately that was not being observed.”
The issue of timesheets may be an area where both sides are not seeing eye to eye. In a statement given to The Muse, the university said that a main reason for not paying certain graduate students was because they did not submit timesheets.
“The matter at issue here is not a refusal to pay but rather the need to verify hours worked before outstanding payments can be responsibly dispersed. The long-standing practice for Graduate Assistants at Grenfell requires the submission of bi-weekly timesheets before pay is processed.”
TAUMUN claims the university “broke labour laws”
To TAUMUN, they have over 65 members at Grenfell who are improperly paid, and likely more, since summer contracts ended on August 31st.
Knoll argues that, because of the frozen payments, Memorial owes these students “thousands of dollars.”
In response to this, MUN said, “To be clear: all students who submitted their worked hours as per the existing process were paid on time, and in full. Students who did not submit their hours as per the regular process were given the opportunity to submit their hours for additional payroll runs. “
The university also rejected TAUMUN’s claim that over 65 graduate students have yet to be paid, telling The Muse that only 37 graduate students had yet to be paid, according to their records.
The MUN-TAUMUN agreement
In addition to accusing the university of breaking the Collective Agreement and the Newfoundland and Labrador Labour Standards Act, TAUMUN claims the university has violated “several things” in the MUN-TAUMUN agreement.
One Grenfell graduate student told The Muse, on the condition that their name not be disclosed, about their struggles to work the given hours in their contract.
“I was supposed to have 85 hours from January to April of this year, and I only received 18… it was four months of constant emails [to my supervisor] asking ‘what can I do?’”
The student said they were later asked to make up the 67 hours between August 5th and 20th.
They struggled to get in contact with their supervisor to get their hours, and claimed that another Grenfell graduate did not even hear from their contract supervisor until after their contract had already ended.
Section 14.04(a) of the MUN-TAUMUN agreement states, “The Supervisor and the Graduate Assistant shall meet no later than fifteen (15) days after the beginning of the appointment to review duties and expectations and ensure that the hours allocated in the letter of appointment are adequate for the assignment. At the request of either the Supervisor or the Graduate Assistant, the Parties shall complete Description of Duties and Allocation of Hours Form (Appendix B) and it shall be signed by both Parties, and copied to the union.”
As for what comes next, Knoll told The Muse, “We have raised the issue through the appropriate channels, and we have essentially put it into MUN’s court. We are very much waiting for them to take the appropriate actions to address this. At any time, MUN could choose to pay these employees and make this right.”