Well, sometimes it’s just hard to keep silent.
As many of you probably know, I’m a faculty member in Toronto at the business school of Canada’s third largest university, York University. As many of you probably don’t, given the international constitution of my blog audience (only a tiny, tiny minority of my readers are actually coming from Canada), York University is currently on strike — at least it is for undergraduates, about 50,000 undergraduates being affected.
There are 3340 striking teaching assistants, contract faculties and graduate assistants currently at York University. I’ve been following the strike on and off, as it started 10 weeks ago while I was away on my sabbatical travel. I’m still on sabbatical and the strike doesn’t affect me personally at all.
Scratch that. It affects me a lot.
First of all, when I go in to my office, I totally feel for the people on the picket lines. It’s obvious, even before the -20° weather set in Toronto, that they didn’t want to be there. Who would? They clearly are fighting for what they think is right. But these are tough economic times. And there are some difficult realities that all of us are having to face right now. In other words, it’s a really, really, really bad time to be striking.
My heart really goes out to the students. Our undergraduate program at Schulich has ground to a standstill. Fifty thousand students are sitting there waiting to be taught. Started classes, books are bought, tuition is paid. International students are twiddling their thumbs. If any of them want a part-time job, good luck getting it. You’re competing with the other 50,000 students, and what employer in this economic climate or any other one, is going to want to hire you knowing that within a week or two you could be called back your classes, and that will become your first priority. It’s an impossible, untenable, disgusting situation to be putting students into. It turns my stomach.
Furthermore, as an academic I can’t imagine why I would want to be unionized (I am though–no one gave me a choice). I just don’t see the point in it. I’m not a coal miner. I don’t work on some unsafe production line. I work in a business school, teaching business students. If I do my job right, and I teach my students well, and I inspire businesspeople, and I publish in the world’s top journals, and I play a part in my academic community, then why the heck would I need a union? I worked for seven years in a private American university as a junior faculty member. I sweated it out. There was no safety net. No union. And I did okay.
Let’s talk about online communities for a second. There is even a Facebook group for the parents of York students who are sick and tired of this strike. Recently, parents warned each other to think really carefully before they send their kids to York University. One parent was quoted in Toronto’s major newspaper telling other parents of that Facebook group that “the history of labor disputes really affects the learning.”
Well, duh! It sure does.
Karma is already coming to bite us back in the behind. The news story today on the front page of Toronto’s major newspaper, the Toronto Star, reports a dramatic drop in the number of students who are picking York University as their first choice for University next year.
Overall applications by high school students to universities across Ontario is actually up 1.1% over last year. But not to York.
Applications to York are down almost 15%. Not a surprise for me. I expected to drop to be even higher. I can understand why parents and students would feel threatened by this strike. It just wouldn’t make sense not to learn from the past.
So who benefits? Well, York University’s competitors in Toronto certainly did. Applications to University of Toronto are up over 4%. Applications to Ryerson University are up over 10%. And applications to the Ontario College of Art and Design are up over 20%. All of these postsecondary schools are in Toronto. The strikers handed them a huge gift. And in a tough economy, those admissions of those applications are harder to find. That money is money taken away from University, resources lost.
Where is the extra money to pay these striking workers demands going to come from? And the striking workers, who have been disrupting classes, marching in during examinations and singing songs, holding back students from Canada and around the world in their studies, messing up their summer work plans and their chances of getting hired for internships and summer positions… are they supposed to simply and seamlessly rejoin the community?
Even if the striking workers go back to work this year, the damage is done. People aren’t going to soon forget the strike of 2008 to 2009 and what it did to York University, York University students, and the future of the university.
It’s shameful.
Oh, man. Ouch.
Hi Rob–
First off, I admit I know nothing of the particulars of this strike, its causes, the ‘victory’ sought after by those doing the striking, etc. I also would also tend to agree that it does indeed sound like a crappy situation all around, especially for students, and for the university in general.
However, this particular low-paid, hard-working adjunct feels compelled to suggest that you don’t feel like you need a union because you have good academic job. Tenured, sabbaticals, adequate support for research, and presumably well-paid with benefits. I’m not saying that your position isn’t well-deserved or earned. But your current perspective sounds, to me, privileged.
Bad karma indeed– but perhaps its recipient might instead the university administration who failed to adequately appreciate its (presumably) underpaid and exploited TAs & contract workers (& who began doing so long before any downturn in enrollment took a bite out of the budget)
Just saying.
Lee G.
Don’t know what’s wrong with my wordpress editor here…sorry for the added punctuation…
<p><p><p>Quite right, Lee, and I’m glad someone finally said it. Makes me wonder if anyone is reading this thing at all. </p><br /><br /><br />
<p>I did say it’s a difficult situation. And I do realize that my situation is *now* privileged. However, I started out as an adjunct, then as junior faculty with no safety net, had to keep moving myself and my family to get positions. And I worked (and continue to work) my youknowhat off. In my own personal experience, I never got the benefit of a union. Maybe I’m just being a bit controversial here. But my privilege came with a big price tag, paid in full.</p><br /><br /><br />
<p>When you said *presumably* underpaid and exploited, to me that’s the key. The offer on the table is over 9% over three years guaranteed increases, and improved benefits (including dental care, vision care, $500 a year for chiro, $500 for naturopaths, $500 for massage, $500 for podiatrists, and wait, there’s more…plus remember we Canadians already get complete free health care). It really ain’t too bad. The university has been, I think, bargaining in good faith, and not taking advantage of a bad economic environment. I almost certainly won’t be getting 9 percent over the next three years.</p><br /><br /><br />
<p>In this case, it’s the union that is the problem, not the administation, in my opinion. Sometimes for sure it’s the administration–I don’t take sides automatically. This is a national union trying to make a point by making our school an example. And 50,000 students can’t be taught.</p><br /><br /><br />
<p>A specific case. Not a general rule. Some. probably many, adjuncts and contract academic workers have a raw deal. </p><br /><br /><br />
<p>Oh, in an interesting update, my school is going back to school. They received special permission to start teaching our undergrads again. So, amidst a striking school, the business school goes on, and the business school undergrads will complete their years and get their degrees.</p><br /><br /><br />
<p>Good news, for “us.” And this strike is all about “us” versus “them”….unfortunately.</p></p></p>
Hi Rob,
Though as Lee has pointed out I as well don’t know much about this strike except after your facebook mention, but I think I do understand your position on this and share your view that students become the victims at the end for something they have no control over whatsoever. I think the timing here cannot come as you said at a worst time with the world in a financial crisis it hasn’t seen in decades. In spite of all that I wonder if the other Universities in Toronto somewhat compare with what York is offering its staff, if that’s the case then it makes it more difficult to understand the strikers demands (even though I’m still quite ignorant of the details). In anycase I’m glad the students are back to school..I can imagine how that must have been.
hope this comes to a better ending..
Thanks, Rob, for understanding my basic point. As I think I understand yours. I do know, for example, that TAs at my current employer were recently considering striking in order to gain free tuition as a benefit (which all other employees, both faculty & staff, receive). But they recognized that now was not a good time to strike, and backed down for the time being.
I also belong to a union, whether I like it or not, and I’m glad they’re there to represent my (hypothetical, at least) interests & negotiate on my behalf. Even when sometimes it doesn’t necessarily work out in my favor. (I lost my first academic job because my union, at that time, successfully negotiated new seniority rules for adjunct hires. Which meant I, as the new girl on the block, got locked out of that dept. Still, I could appreciate that victory for my colleagues & was happily able to find more work elsewhere. Still adjuncting though…)
Anyhow, personal perspectives aside, I think a strike is likely to be most effective when the public (& especially those most inconvenienced by said strike) is able to appreciate and sympathize with the cause. From your description, it sounds like that’s been lost in this case. A shame.