"Overwork" means working more hours on your duties than are allocated on your job description.

Each and all of your assigned duties must be alloted an exact time on your Description of Duties and Allocation of Hours form. Signing this form does not mean you agree with the time allotment, just that you have seen it. 

You must be paid for all the hours you work, even if this includes attending lectures for the course you TA/lead tutorials for or answering student emails. And of course, your assigned hours must include adequate time for prep and marking/grading.

It is very important to keep track of the actual hours you work; you can either use your own recording system or the Workload Log included in your Members' Manual.

First, when you are appointed for the first time in a given course (even if you are a seasoned TA), the supervisor must meet with you within the first month to discuss ways of avoiding overwork. If this meeting does not happen, either ask your supervisor for the meeting or contact the Union office or your Steward.

Second, halfway through the course, you are contractually obliged to meet with your supervisor to review the job description. You should bring your up-to-date record of hours worked to this meeting so that you can review how many hours you have worked and how many hours you have left.

This meeting will frequently result in a change in the distribution of hours and may also result in the addition of hours to the job description (there can be no reduction of hours, however). If this process is unsatisfactory—or you feel guilted or coerced into signing a revised job description with which you disagree, contact the Union office or your Union Steward. Your signature only indicates that you have seen and discussed the revised hours, not that you agree with them.

If at any point during your contract (before or after the mid-course review), you know that you will be overworking in general, or in any of the sections of the job description, please get in touch with the Union.

There are two ways of resolving this problem. The workload audit process should allow the Union to address systemic workload issues in particular Departments. If a Department is found to be consistently violating workload procedures, it will not be up to individual members to take action. However, we will need members to help us by keeping track of their hours. Together, we can help deal with the rampant overwork found at the UofT.

First, you can file a Workload Review Form with your supervisor (the form is available at the back of the Collective Agreement, in your Department office, from your Steward, and on our website in Adobe format). Note: in order to get compensation for overwork, you must file this form PRIOR TO overworking. Second, your Steward can meet with the Chair of the Department (the two constitute the Departmental Workload Committee) and try to get her/him to agree to an increase in hours. You can choose one or both of these routes. The Union has been very successful at getting adjustments in order to bring duties into line with pay received or vice versa. It is your right to be paid for all the work you do.

Course instructors have a different procedure since they have no job descriptions. If you are facing a heavier workload than another instructor or faculty member teaching a similar course in the same Department, you have a right to discuss your workload issue with the Chair or Course Coordinator in order to either get more support (TA resources) or money to compensate. Under no circumstances can a course instructor be asked to work more than 460 hours on a full (Y) course without extra remuneration. Contact the Union for details.

The Collective Agreement allows the Union to audit up to nine Departments a year for compliance with workload procedures.

The workload audit process should allow the Union to address systemic workload issues in particular Departments. If a Department is found to be consistently violating workload procedures, it will not be up to individual members to take action. However, we will need members to help us by keeping track of their hours. Together, we can help deal with the rampant overwork found at the UofT - contact the Union in confidence.

This is a common problem that can occur during the marking/grading crunch at the end of a course: working too many hours in too short a period.

Under Ontario’s Employment Standards Act, which forms part of our Collective Agreement, the maximum number of hours you can be required to work is eight hours a day and 48 hours a week. You cannot be asked to work more than this.

And if you even work more than 44 hours in a week, you must be paid overtime pay: time and a half for all hours over 44 in a single week.

No. This is a myth persisting from an old restriction on work hours which no longer exists. While some external scholarships may place restrictions on how many hours you can work as a condition of the scholarship, UofT has no such restriction, UofT guaranteed funding comes with no such restriction, and the Collective Agreement or Union places no restriction on the number of jobs you are allowed to have while you are a student.

The only restriction on weekly work hours is imposed by Ontario's Employment Standards Act, and this applies to everyone, not just students: you cannot be required to work more than 48 hours in a single week in a single job, or more than eight hours in a single day. Even if you are asked to work more than 44 hours in a single week for a single job, you must receive overtime pay: time and a half for all hours over 44 in a single week.