corporatization

The YUFA Caucus for Democracy

The President of YUFA showed his contempt for the recognized election procedures, which were changed a whole 6 weeks and 4 days into the elections for Stewards’ Council reps to Executive. Executive members were suddenly allowed to vote and thus skewed, and probably stole, the results of the election.

Richard Wellen

YUFA has been very ‘cooperative’ in the last decade of negotiations. In consequence, we have won very few improvements in pay and working conditions over those years. In the meantime, we have seen faculty unions at Carleton, Brock and Wilfred Laurier win teaching load reductions that have been refused by our own employer. Now is not the time to fall further behind and make our own members pay the price for the misguided policies of both the employer and the government.

The author prefers to remain anonymous

Appendix T, a primary negotiating position proposed by YUFA Executive, should be of grave concern to YUFA members. They need to be informed about it. Appendix T (formerly U) in effect suggests that all YUFA members (irrespective of salary) forego a 4% salary increase in the first year of the new contract. Appendix T can only be defeated if people come out and vote against it.

Tyler Shipley

There is growing acknowledgement... that there is a crisis in post-secondary education and a need for real change in the structure of university funding. This has manifested as a proliferation of student and worker unrest across the country and, indeed, the world; in 2008 and early 2009, there were dozens of university strikes and occupations across the world marked both by broader ideological challenges to the prevailing social order as well as increased repression from campus and state authorities... The recent strike of graduate students and part-time faculty at York University in Toronto over the winter of 2008-09 confronted these questions directly... this piece will sketch a brief history of the funding crisis in post-secondary education in the hopes of highlighting what I think are the crucial pressure-points in fighting back the trends toward inaccessible and watered-down educational experiences for students and low-reward, exploitative working conditions for teachers.

To read the complete article, go to:
http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/bullet215.html

David Noble

FLAPS Dean has been appointed a Full Professor in the Department of History.

On behalf of the York Democratic Forum

Paul Baxter, Jody Berland, Malcolm Blincow, Ricardo Grinspun, Nick Lary, Marcia Macaulay, Arun Mukherjee, Ester Reiter, Nicola Short

In his address to Senate on 26 February –available at http://www.yorku.ca/mediar/archive/Release.php?Release=1623 –President Shoukri delivered his first speech after provincial back-to-work legislation led to a long-delayed return to class and a chaotic end-of-term schedule for students and faculty.

Linda Briskin

Today [Feb. 25]in the Globe and Mail I was shocked to find a 62 page glossy magazine promoting York's 50th anniversary. I would imagine that the cost of this magazine would far exceed the cost of the demands that the contract faculty and graduate students had on the table during the strike. Combine this with the cost of the external anti-union lawyer to front the negotiations for three months, the branded wine, the cost of President Shoukri's mortgage...

Lykke de la Cour, CUPE 3903, Unit 2

In the recent CUPE strike, York University’s over-reliance on contractualized academic labour erupted as a central and critical question in discussions around the union’s job security proposals. Interestingly, last fall, at the outset of the strike, most Unit 2 members of CUPE 3903 were largely unaware of the extent to which contract faculty were utilized to fulfill the university’s teaching mission, particularly with respect to undergraduate instruction. Our concerns lay more with working conditions, specific terms of employment, and the precariousness of contractual work. However, one of the benefits that the strike afforded was time to research more fully the circumstances of contractualized academic staff at the university.

Harald Bauder

Academia increasingly faces pressures of corporatization and flexibilization. Of particular concern is the segmentation of academic labour into stable tenured or tenure-track professors and “flexible” sessional and adjunct faculty. In this paper, I review evidence of the segmentation of the Canadian academic labour market, examine the conditions that permit segmentation to exist, discuss why academic geographers in both segments comply with a segmented labour market and, finally, propose potential strategies to address the issue of segmentation.

Andrea O'Reilly, School of Women's Studies, York

Letter to the National Post, 27 Jan 2009
If anyone thinks that it will be "business as usual" at York University once
classes resume, they are kidding themselves. Professors and students are
returning to a university that has bullied its most vulnerable employees for
close to three months and left its prized graduate students out in the cold. It
is clear that York does not value the excellent teaching done by more than 50%
of its faculty. This is a university where dozens and dozens of professors must
reapply for their teaching position each year. This is a university where
mid-management types -- who spend their day pushing paper -- make up to 10

Message to the York Community signed by the Deans of York University

When CUPE 3903 went on strike in November, we all undertook to seek the suspension, with limited exceptions, of academic activities in our Faculties. In so doing, we acknowledged our reliance on the work of our CUPE colleagues in helping to carry out the academic mission of the University. In addition, we continue to recognize the importance to our graduate students of financial support for the successful completion of their “apprenticeship” in our profession.

David Noble

In a Globe and Mail profile published just after his first week in office, York University's new president Mandouh Shoukri revealed his bold plans to "renovate" the university by focusing upon commercialized research in science, engineering, and medicine. "That is what my mandate is all about," Shoukri explained, "the direction is set."…

At York , of course, it will be an easy sell, as it always is in an autocratic environment... And some will see in the coming renovation a career or organizational opportunity. Already Arthur Hilliker, the president of the faculty association, has publicly echoed Shoukri in his enthusiastic and self-serving –he is chairman of the biology department –endorsement of the mandate.