The Teaching Assistants Association held a rally Wednesday to emphasize their rejection of an employee-contract proposal.

The TAA and a state committee have repeatedly clashed for the past year over employee contracts, with teaching assistants and project assistants begging for higher salaries and benefits while state legislators respond with concerns over the tight budget.

TAA co-president and mathematics teaching assistant Boian Popunkiov said it is difficult for some TAs to get by on average salaries of $1,000 or less per month; they often must secure additional jobs to supplement their pay.

“Most members are eligible for food stamps but cannot actually attain them due to a technicality,” Popunikov said.

He said the state Joint Committee on Employment Relations offered no pay raises this year, with the possibility of a 1 percent pay raise the following year.

“Considering the 2.5 percent inflation this year, this is a 5 percent pay cut,” Popunikov said.

English 100 TA Mark Pettus, a third-year graduate student, said he often works several more hours than he is paid. He said salaries are based on the average amount of time a TA would work.

“Certain departments don’t line up to the hours, so to fund them everyone will say, ‘Wink, wink, we’re going to spend this much time [working],'” Pettus said.

Although Pettus said his salary is not what he would like it to be, his department staff has faith in their negotiators to approve a fair contract.

According to Popunikov, the main sources of contention in the state committee’s proposal are the skimpy pay raises, the nature of administrative child-care funding and the lack of domestic-partner benefits for same-sex and other couples who choose not to marry.

“Currently the University of Wisconsin is one of the only universities that do not have domestic-partner benefits,” Popunikov said, adding that the committee offered to exchange TA pay raises for domestic-partner benefits.

Doyle approved teaching-assistant contracts last May after negotiations raged for months. He signed gradual 5.5 percent pay-raise contracts that expired in June and cautioned at the time that the next contracts would not include such high raises due to budget constraints.

However, TAA member and English TA Mike Quieto said he fears state officials will try to “revenge” bargaining points won by the TAA in last year’s round of negotiations, featuring “cuts in benefits and all manner of nastiness.”

“Hopefully, these negotiations won’t last as long as last year’s, but they will definitely be intense,” Quieto said. “We’re in for another big battle.”

Quieto said the Joint Committee on Employment Relations had asked those negotiating to have all 19 contracts for agencies employing state workers to be finished for the JCOER’s 9 a.m. Thursday meeting, but only three contracts will be ready by then.