CUPE strike

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.

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

The YUFA Democracy Caucus

These minutes were initially withheld as a gesture of good will -to see if the presence of witnesses would lead to greater openness, transparency, and accountability in the transactions of YUFA Executive. The minutes are now being posted.

Linda Briskin

I have just learned that TAs and contract faculty will only be getting 90% of their Fall salary. Although it is the case that there are two less weeks in the year (22 rather than 24 weeks), TAs and faculty are facing a lot of extra work to sort out remediation and the winter semester which include revised schedules and assignments, setting up make up exams and deferrals, and dealing with student concerns. If the York President wants to heal the wounds of the strike, as he claims, cutting back the salary of TAs and contract faculty is not the route to go.

Richard Wellen

In his Excalibur editorial of Feb. 18, Prof. Gerrard Naddaf questions the very legitimacy of conversions or SRC-type appointments demanded by CUPE 3903 during the strike. The basic thrust of his letter is that there is only one good way to make a 'real' academic appointment.

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.

TheStar.com - Opinion
January 29, 2009

Jody Berland
Ricardo Grinspun

The longest university strike in English Canada ends with back-to-work legislation this week. As full-time faculty at York University we are distressed at the impact of this strike on our 50,000 students, who have confronted enormous disruption to their lives, finances and future.

With such disastrous consequences, what can we learn from this debacle for the future of labour relations in Ontario universities?

Marcia Macaulay

The current strike at York has broken all records for labour disputes at English-language universities in Canada. Last week, CUPE 3903 faced a forced ratification vote to decide whether the employer’s latest offer would be supported by its membership. The offer was rejected by 62% of the members in a healthy turnout of 69% of eligible members. A significant aspect of this dispute concerns acceptance or non-acceptance of a new class of position: Teaching/Service Appointments. Such appointments replace the existing Special Renewable Contract Appointments already accepted by the York University Faculty Association. The new TSAs have not been accepted by YUFA; they have not even been introduced to its membership, and they present serious problems for YUFA should they be accepted by CUPE 3903.

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.

The current CUPE 3903 strike is linked to and attempts to address an increasing trend towards casualization of labour throughout the economy, among universities, and at York. Casualization is driven by a “bottom line” mentality that emphasizes cost reduction and conceals the broader social and economic costs and impacts of job insecurity and precarious employment.

Union negotiators sometimes refer to 'principled' vs. 'positional' bargaining. In principled bargaining, both sides approach negotiation as an opportunity to solve a problem. In positional bargaining, both sides seek to score points on issues and to influence opinions as well as contract language. Over the course of the CUPE 3903 strike, we have seen several examples of 'positional' bargaining by the Employer. These actions undermine the work of both bargaining teams and pose additional risks to the collegiality of the University.

YUFA affirms its commitment to Affirmative Action in all appointments throughout the University, as outlined in Article 12.21. This follows a previous communiqué dated 20 Nov. 08, in which YUFA affirmed its support of the Conversion Program and reiterated CUPE 3903’s position that it should be continued and extended.

CUPE strike: A fair and equitable resolution to this dispute will only be achieved by addressing promptly the precarious work situation of York University’s many long serving, high intensity contract faculty.