Letter: Late Negotiations Stalling Equal Wages
Dear Editor,
There was some misinformation provided by Nader Jafari Nodoushan and Gounash Pirniya in the article “TRAC Wants Resolution for Wage Disparities” (Sept. 14 2015).
Pirniya’s grievance is only an issue because of the current executive’s ineffectiveness, and their complaint is the result of a pay structure negotiated by engineering students themselves, a problem that was solved over a year ago.
Last point first: the original discriminatory pay scales were negotiated in 2009-2010. The executive and bargaining teams were made up exclusively of engineers, with a PSAC advisor. To answer Pirniya’s question, “Why is this just happening in engineering?” because engineers made it that way.
The bargaining team that took over in 2010—which included an engineer—did everything we could to address the disparity, but we had very little room to maneuver because the previous bargaining team had signed off on everything. Concordia refused to renegotiate the pay grade structure.
In 2013-2014, the bargaining committee—which also included an engineer—was able to abolish Grade 3 and Markers, who were bumped up to the next higher pay grade. This was done in part to specifically address the common practice in ENCS of splitting higher paying contracts into lower paying ones.
Pirniya said, “The fact that the union agreed to the wage disparity in the past doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be changed.” True—that is why we changed it. In 2013-2014, the discriminatory pay scale, which forms the basis of Pirniya’s grievance, was negotiated out of existence, and would have been abolished last May if TRAC had been able to enter negotiations over pay.
Negotiations never happened, because of an investigation into complaints against Nodoushan, who was ultimately accused of harassment and other misbehaviour in a report. PSAC ignored the report, tried to bury it, dumped the entire executive committee to hold a new election and allowed Nodoushan to remain, despite the investigators recommendation of a one-year suspension. TRAC has been ineffective under Nodoushan and negotia- tions have gone nowhere.
The claim that Lab Demonstrators in ENCS are paid less than in other faculties is false. Most Lab Demonstrators out- side of ENCS are undergrads or Master’s students in Grade 2. Grade 2 undergrads are paid $14.46, graduate students other than PhDs are paid $17.79 and PhDs are paid $20.01. ENCS Lab Demonstrators are paid $18.53. The vast majority of Lab Demonstrators outside ENCS are paid less than ENCS Lab Demonstrators.
— Robert Sonin
TRAC Bargaining Officer 2010-2012
TRAC President 2012-2013
TRAC Bargaining Committee Member 2013-2014 TRAC Mobilization Officer 2014
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