Tuition rebates and the teaching support staff union: An examination of the textual coordination of university bargaining

For the past decade unionized teaching assistants in Canada have secured tuition rebates through collective bargaining. Graduate student bargaining is rooted in public sector regulation, social organization, and state formation. I examine how ruling relations coordinate teaching assistants’ inability to secure a tuition waiver in the negotiation of the Teaching Support Staff Union’s latest contract which is dated from 2004-2010. In this thesis, I examine two texts that were influential in bargaining. First, I look at a Labour Relations Board decision over a TA strike at the University of British Columbia. Second, I will examine a leaked document from the Public Sector Employer’s Council dictating the bargain process to the University. Dorothy Smith’s “Institutional Ethnography” and “Mapping the Social Relations of Struggle” as methods of inquiry allow me to see how texts are coordinated in University bargaining and what teaching assistants can do to resist them.