YORK

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.

Nick Lary

In March 2005 the Canadian Association of University Teachers set up a Committee of Inquiry in direct response to the actions of the York Administration and the Toronto police in suppressing a student demonstration in Vari Hall on January 20 2005. There was widespread dismay at York and in the wider academic community and beyond over the actions of the Administration. The Committee of Inquiry was set up at the request of YUFA Executive.

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.

Janice Newson

Letter to President Shoukri, 27 Nov 2008

I am a faculty member in the Arts sociology department and I will be retired in 3 days. I have been at York since 1971 and from 1975 through until 1997 when the 8 week YUFA strike took place, I have been close to and often deeply involved in the negotiating process at York.

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.