Historicist: "The city that nobody loves"
Elsewhere in the Ist-a-Verse
It's official: class at York University is cancelled until further notice, as TAs, grad students, and faculty are all on strike as of midnight tonight. The Globe ominously notes near the foot of its article that "the striking York workers belong to the same group that were involved in a bitter 11-week strike in 2000-2001, the longest ever at a Canadian university." Super-long Christmas/Hannukah break!
add to stumble upon
add to reddit
tweet this
post to facebookTIP US OFF
Most Popular
Rocket Talk: Can Sunday Subway Service Start Sooner? (39)
This Shit is Steel Bananas (34)
Googling Toronto (28)
TTC Approves Fare Hikes, Extends Student Discount (26)
Polling Booth: The TTC Fare Increase (25)
Looking for Leonids (18)
Gender Studies Coming to a High School Near You (17)- Sound Tracks: “I Wish I Knew Natalie Portman” by k-os (16)
- Newsstand: November 19, 2009 (16)
Edgewater Hotel Sign Comes Down (15)
The amount of partying should be incredible with this revelation. Unless they're like U of T, which probably wouldn't consider this a disruption and would conjure up some strategy to force students to do the same work as usual.
Super-long Christmas/Hannukah break!
Now, David, of all things. This is York. There will certainly be no Hannukah break.
I went to Seneca on York campus during the last strike and it really sucked having to walk half an hour each way in the cold to/from the bus every day because York's TAs were blocking the roads and they didn't care who was effected.
It's unfortunate when TAs don't follow the avenues afforded to them to argue against professors that overwork them. If the assigned hours aren't enough to mark the assignments or teach the labs, then you need to bring up the issue before the hours are worked. Don't work for free. You hurt yourself and those that follow after you.
Hey Matt1256, the strike is over much larger issues than overwork, and the union has been bargaining with the employer since this summer. The strike is about issues such as job security, properly funding graduate student education, and wages that bring the folks who do a large proportion of the university's teaching to the poverty line. You can read CUPE's demands over here: http://www.3903strike.ca/ and about how bargaining with the employer has gone over here: http://www.cupe3903.tao.ca/. I encourage you to read about the issues we felt were worth striking over. Unsurprisingly, they have been misrepresented by the employer in the media.
As a fellow educator and union member, I can commiserate with the TAs and their concerns and hope that they can swiftly get a fair deal. I have also experienced this from the other side though, in 2001, which was the last year of my BA at York.
The strike did much more than disrupt my last few weeks of school and make it much more difficult for me to complete my Honours thesis. It created constantly unsafe conditions for students who lived on campus, but worked off-campus, as the walk from the edge (where picket lines were set up, and TTC would not cross) to any of the residences was and is, as Rek noted, quite lengthy and not that well-lit. While I appreciate the TAs rights to strike for fair working conditions and reasonable compensation, I don't think they should do so to the detriment of students' safety.
I too have to walk about 30 minutes to Seneca @ York simply because of the ignorance and selfish disregard of these union members.
How many strikes must I suffer through this year? 2008 was definitely the year of the strike.
I'm all for striking, but when strikers are indiscriminate in who they target it makes me much less likely to give a shit what their demands are. By all means picket the administration building entrances (for example), but students (let alone staff and students from a completely different school) aren't responsible for the poor shape your negotiations are in and can't help you.
@xtremesniper
Oh no, a big long walk to school! I bet those ignorant a selfish union members never thought of the injustice that might have caused you! Were you forced to work up a sweat? Do your calves hurt?
When you're a contract faculty member and York won't hire you full-time because it's cheaper to pay you wages below the poverty line, I'm sure you'll have a better understanding of what suffering is.
You can't be suffering too much if you're still there and not working somewhere else.
Welcome to the real world. Don't worry, you'll learn about it one day when you actually have to live in it.
hrmm... Seems the strike is more strategic then anything:
"This is something that we are mandated to by CUPE Ontario because we would like to see in 2010 all the CUPE locals in the university sector bargaining at the same time."
Sure, and I'm sure CUPE never is anything but honest in representing their own and the other side's position.
torontothegreat: That is why the push for "job security," so they never will have to live in it.
How about the students who will have their school terms pushed into holidays or the summer, and end up losing out on jobs and the income to pay their tuition?
I can't help but think the only thing CUPE is interested in is CUPE.
ummm...
"$6000 to teach one class, which involves about 200 hours of work."
That's 30 bucks an hour
WTF?
Were you forced to work up a sweat? Do your calves hurt?
Were you forced to become a graduate student?
I was a MA student at York around 2004. I was paid about $1200/month as a TA. At the time, York paid TA's the most in Canada (most pay around $1000-$1100), but I think York made other universities increase their pay.
Just so people know, new faculty members (with various titles depending on the university) are paid the same, even less than TA's. I think the "$6000 for one course" is more like a tenured prof. In fact, I was a TA for a new faculty member last year, and I made more than the prof did! Remember that those profs who are young, interesting and inspiring are making very little money (it's those old, boring profs that bring in the big bucks). And university administrators make A LOT of money - like $200,000-$300,000 a year!
I'm not even talking about TAs and GAs at this point, because for the most part they understand that grad school is a tough couple of years where you eat canned soup and accrue debt. I'm talking about contract faculty, who are not full-time grad students and who teach the same courses that full-time faculty teach.
More and more universities are not hiring full-time teaching staff because hiring part-time teaching staff is cheaper.
You can whine about ivory towers and elitist academics, but I'm guessing that most people on this blog have an undergraduate degree of some kind. If people are going to go to university, there has to be someone around to teach it. And you can't attract good people to teach it by paying them peanuts.
@ Karen:
You obviously didn't get the point of my post. It's not that I'm calling them selfish simply because I have to walk farther. No, that's just the icing on the cake.
I'm not even a York student and I'm angry at what they are doing to these students. I'm lucky that my classes are even still running. What about those people who were set to graduate this year? If this strike goes on long enough, their graduation will be delayed. Not only that, but what if you come to York from out of town? You'd have to pay thousands of dollars in living expenses just to be at school longer thanks to your delayed education.
It's pure and simple selfishness when you go out of your way to punish those who have no control over the negotiation process whatsoever. This is why unions are hated so much (aside from the fact that this year alone there has been more strikes affecting more people than I can ever remember before). All strikes do is punish those who are just trying to make ends meet themselves.
And after all this, they expect me to give half a rats ass about their cause? I'm sorry but not a chance in hell. Not. A. Chance. In. Hell.
And yeah, what mister j said.
And that's not to mention the fact that they are asking for wage increases in a time where other people are wondering if they'll even have their jobs by the end of the year. How about a reality check?
It's as if unions go out of their way to make themselves look more and more disconnected from society and reality as each day passes.
If only they could strike without being inconvenient to anyone. Now that would really accomplish something.
Reality check: universities are not the automotive sector?
PRQ, this isn't an inconvenience. It's jeopardizing people's education.
The Viva strike inconvenienced people because it took them longer to get to school/work but they still were able to go to work. Work wasn't cancelled, and it didn't have any long term effects on anyone.
Not only have classes been cancelled, but they are also halting traffic on Keele, causing massive backups all the way into York Region. That in of itself would have been enough of an inconvenience to make a point.
Fucking whiners. Grow up and live in the real world yourselves. Assholes.
Solidarity, 3903.
Love, OPSEU local 528.
Of course the strike is jeopardizing people's education. But if there's no strike, then you're condemning your kids and grandkids to a world filled with low-cost, low-quality contract faculty, and their education will be nowhere near as valuable as yours today.
Quality education? If union involvement guaranteed quality then Ford, GM and Chrysler would make the best cars out there.
PRQ, I don't even know how you managed to pull that one out of the air, but it was good for a laugh. Thanks.