Simon Fraser University's Teaching Support Staff Union (TSSU) set up picket lines at the university's Surrey campus Thursday.
The TSSU represents approximately 1,600 workers, including teaching assistants, sessional instructors and support workers.
“Our members are struggling to pay rent," said Dalton Kamish, a TSSU trustee and member of the union's bargaining team. "They’re struggling to buy groceries. They’re struggling to afford the medications that they need to survive.”
Kamish says after 41 bargaining sessions and 19 months without a contract, SFU has left the union no choice but to escalate strike action. The union's demands include increased wages, an improved pension plan and an adjusted pay model to account for increased class sizes.
Kamish told CTV News all tutorial and lab sessions are cancelled indefinitely, and some professors have cancelled classes as a sign of support for the union.
SFU released a statement Thursday saying the two sides remain in disagreement on "several fundamental issues."
SFU says it already offered the TSSU the maximum wage increase under the province's shared recovery mandate. However, the union believes there are ways around that issue.
"We're arguing that there's a lot of ways to improve this collective agreement that don't need to count against our wage increases, like, paying for work that's already getting done doesn't need to count against our wage increases and it's ridiculous to argue that it has to," said Kamish.
The union plans to picket outside SFU's Vancouver campus on Friday and the Burnaby campus on Tuesday.
