CREW CSN

Photo Maria Cholakova

Hannah Scott-Talib,
Local Journalism Initiative

TAs and RAs to receive 20 per cent pay raise in the coming year

The Concordia Research and Education Workers Union (CREW) has ended its strike following a new collective agreement with the university ratified on March 20.

CREW had been on strike since March 12.

The agreement was presented to CREW members by the bargaining committee at a Special General Assembly on March 20, where 70 per cent of CREW membership voted in its favour. 

According to CREW’s External Affairs Officer Lauren Laframboise, the major highlight of this new agreement is that teaching assistants (TAs) and research assistants (RAs) will receive a 20 per cent pay increase by 2026. 

“That 20 per cent is sort of the result of our strike action,” Laframboise said. “The initial offer from the university had been 11 per cent, and after our strike, we got all the way up to 20 per cent, so we see that as a huge victory.”

Improved health and safety provisions, as well as provisions for paid training for CREW’s membership, are among the highlights of the agreement. Laframboise added that another important point of the agreement is a new indexation system that takes into consideration TA hours per enrolled undergraduate student. In this case, indexation refers to the value of wages being adjusted based on changes to enrolment, ensuring the university cannot undercut pay raises by shrinking CREW members’ contracts.

“One of the big problems that our members often face is that they don’t have enough hours for their contract,” she said. “Looking to the future where the university is foreshadowing all these budget cuts, we wanted to prevent a situation where they would just take money from our pay increase by cutting our hours.”

She said that this indexation serves as a foundation, giving TAs and RAs a minimum number of work hours and keeping them safe from ongoing budget cuts being made by the university.

She added that CREW’s bargaining committee have been working on this agreement for over a year, and that the agreement is set to last until its expiry date of May 31, 2026. 

“The new collective agreement really reflects the whole year’s worth of work,” Laframboise said. “We had a substantive debate last night over the agreement, but I think that people are pretty happy. […] It was a pretty decisive vote.”

According to her, despite the agreement, it won’t be long until CREW once again returns to the negotiating table.

“At this stage, we’re super happy with the gains that we’ve made in this deal, but we’re also preparing to go [back] into negotiations very soon again,” she said. 

“The rising cost of living is having a major impact on teaching assistants, who are often in a very precarious financial situation,” said Confédération des syndicats nationaux president Caroline Senneville in a CREW press release on March 21. “They owe their gains [in this agreement] to their courage and determination.”

Concordia University spokesperson Julie Fortier told The Link that the university is happy to have reached an agreement that addresses the needs of both the union members and Concordia.

Concordia’s TAs and RAs are back to work as of March 21. 

The Link’s news editor Geneviève Sylvestre and sports editor Jared Lackman-Mincoff are teaching assistants, and features editor Claudia Beaudoin is a research assistant. They had no involvement in this article.