CUPE strike

Bob Hanke
Departments of Communication Studies, Humanities, Political Science (LAPS)

It’s a dilemma for universities: how do they promote and enhance the research that brings prestige (and funding) to the institution, and at the same time provide a high-quality learning experience to undergraduates if all they can offer are sessional contracts? The answer to this dilemma is not TSAs: CUPE Unit 2 members should resist the “teaching only” trend found in Britain and the U.S. As the core tenure-track faculty shrinks, CUPE Unit 2 members should reject any offers that expand the periphery of an “ever-green” academic underclass of cheap teachers.

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...