Generally a Graduate Assistantship (Research) contract requires you to submit hours worked on a weekly basis. A Graduate Assistant (Teaching) or (Non-Teaching) contract has a fixed amount of hours that you are expected to perform and does not require you to submit hours. However, you should still keep track of your hours worked each week.
Usually the hours assigned in a GAT or GANT will align very closely with the actual hours worked by the graduate assistant, but each semester operational requirements change and very rarely do changes in Assignment of Duty forms reflect increasing demands. The easiest way to prevent yourself from working hours without being appropriately compensated is to have an accurate record of how much you have worked. If you provide this documentation to the employer before going over your contracted hours, you are entitled to either stop working more hours to your contract, or receive a top-up to your GAT/GANT to allow you to work more.
Tools to Help you Track your Worked Hours
GLU has prepared a downloadable Excel spreadsheet specifically for our GAT assignments.
Here’s a video to help you get started.
Alternatively, we recommend a well-established app like Clockify to help you.
Questions? Concerns?
If you have questions or concerns about your workload or would like support with talking to your employment supervisor about this, please reach out to your Graduate Labour Union representative about this