This Friday and next Monday, the 6th and the 9th of April, the office will be closed for Good Friday and Easter Monday.
Sepandar Sepehr
Feb 182012
Dear international members,
Grazyna Drzazga is one of the PhD students in linguistics who had one of the most interesting workshops for international TAs during the TA day. Luckily, she has kindly offered to hold her workshop again this term. The description of this workshop is as follows:
Teaching in a Different Language
Communication breakdown due to limited vocabulary is one of the biggest fears of international graduate students and teaching assistants. This workshop discusses how to compensate for linguistic imperfections. An array of strategies to overcome communication barriers will be presented and discussed.
The workshop will be held on Thursday March 1st, from 12 to 2pm, at CLL (Center for Leadership in Learning) Teaching Commons Inquiry Classroom, Mills Library 504.
If you are interested, please email international@cupe3906.com before the day of the workshop in order to have an estimate of the number of people who want to come to order enough food.
CLL is kindly providing coffee and the space for the workshop.
Jan 242012
1. What is a union?
Perhaps you have heard the story of “the bundle of sticks” or the phrase “united we stand, divided we fall”. That’s basically, what union means. Union (or more precisely trade union), copying from Wikipedia, is an organization of workers that have banded together to achieve common goals such as better working conditions. You might also be familiar with the term ‘syndicate’ in some other languages.
The idea is that employers (intentionally or unintentionally) do not consider the best possible conditions for the workers. Therefore, workers form a union so that each individual does not have to deal with the employer directly, they can go to their union and work with others to achieve a better result; then, they will have the help of other workers and professionals working in the union to solve their issues.
2. Then, what is CUPE 3906?
CUPE stands for Canadian Union of Public Employees. CUPE is a general union of employees across all Canada, and actually the largest one in Canada. Similar to any other organizational structure, there are different levels and the lowest level includes the ‘locals’. CUPE 3906 is the local that we are part of, which includes TAs (Teaching Assistants), Sessional Faculties (the faculty members that are usually not permanent), and postdoctoral students. CUPE 3902 is for example for TAs of University of Toronto.
3. Who is a member of CUPE again?
Aug 152011
Long time ago I had this claim and wanted to share the information with the international students.
Basically, I was not in town when I got sick so I had to go to a walk-in clinic or a hospital. Knowing the waiting time at a hospital I decided to go to a walk-in clinic. Then I found out that they do not accept my UHIP card like McMaster’s Health Centre. I had to pay $60 and then they gave me the receipt to fill the claim and send it to the insurance company myself. They told me there that the claim is not going to be covered completely, the insurance company will pay just 80% of it. However, as you see in the pictures, the rebate was even less than 80%.
Apparently, SunLife has its own rates for services that university clinics and hospitals conform to. Other than that, if you end up going to a walk-in clinic it is possible that you pay something out of your own pocket, in addition to the cost for posting the claim and about a month waiting for the rebate to come back.
