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If You Can Use A Fork, You May Soon Be Able to Continue Your Classes at York

By David Topping

Dalton McGuinty announced this morning that he is a little over a day away from introducing back-to-work legislation to immediately force an end to York University’s strike. According to a statement released on the Ontario premier’s website, McGuinty feels that “there is no reasonable prospect of a negotiated settlement between York University and CUPE Local 3903. The sides are in a clear deadlock, and despite our best efforts to bring the sides together, that has not changed.” “Having exhausted all other options,” McGuinty writes, “I will be recalling the legislature as of Sunday at 1 p.m. for the purposes of introducing back to work legislation. I am asking MPPs from all parties to provide unanimous consent for immediate passage of the bill so that students can get back to school this week.” [via 680 News]

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  • http://undefined David Toronto

    Can someone please explain the “fork” bit, please?
    I can’t understand either the gist or the joke.

  • http://null Lands Down

    York has low admissions standards relative to UofT (generally), so there’s a perception that the students aren’t so smart, thus the phrase “if you can hold a fork, you can go to york”. TOist, lacking much awareness of anything beyond UofT/the Annex/Queen West, references it often for the lack of any other York touchstones.
    Hopefully McGuinty’s BTWL withstands a court challenge, he’s clearly setting the stage by specifically calling this a “clear deadlock”.
    http://www.canlii.org/en/ca/scc/doc/2007/2007scc27/2007scc27.html
    “This may permit interference with the collective bargaining process on an exceptional and typically temporary basis, in situations, for example, involving essential services, vital state administration, clear deadlocks and national crisis.”

  • http://undefined rek

    Fire the strikers and kick them out of school.

  • http://null PickleToes

    I made a post before calling for intervention against gas companies charging what I thought were unreasonable prices. You struck back with the charge that the right-wing is quick to abandon their principles when it serves their interests. Is this the left sacrificing its love for unions in a similar manner?

  • http://null montauk

    Up until today I have been living in terror of the strike ending because I’m afraid of deadlines and doing assignments and not having all day, everyday, to lounge around making chocolate chip cookies and watching reruns of Malcolm In The Middle. But now, I’ve got to say, the prospect of returning seems a little exciting and I’m filled with a strange buoyancy.

  • http://undefined rocker

    hahahah, you can’t fire strikers since they don’t have a contract anymore! York was actually free since last spring to end the contract and hire others — if they wanted.
    It’s funny though — York got themselves into this mess by trying to save a buck by increasingly using more TAs and sessionals.
    I TA’d a class at York recently with 500 students and 1 professor. The only way it functions is by hiring 18 unionized TAs to do the prof’s marking. All the prof does is lecture his 3 hours a week and answer emails.
    If they had smaller classes with lecturing and marking done solely by full time professors they’d reduce their strike risk and reduce the size and power of the part timers’ union. The quality of education would go up (MIT is actually reducing the size of their classes for this very reason) and some of the part time sessionals would get full time jobs and would stop complaining.

  • http://undefined EricSmith

    It goes back to an item from earlier in the strike, when a person or persons threatened to stage a hunger strike to accomplish… well, threatened to stage a hunger strike. Torontoist’s headline was something like “If we cannot go to York, we will not use a fork.” The fork has returned in York strike headlines since.

  • http://null thewatchmaker

    York has a contract with their student TAs and Graduate Assistants. They would still be on the hook for about $40 million of guaranteed funding – in addition to what they would need to pay their replacements. CUPE 3903′s contract costs York $66 million a year – care to explain where you’d find the money? Or, rather, to admit that you don’t actually know anything about the topic?

  • David Topping

    Sorta, yeah, but we’ve used that variation on headlines about York since before the strike. Lands Down is right about its origins, though; it comes from the phrase “if you can hold [or use] a fork, you can go to York.” We only re-use it all the time because there isn’t exactly a plethora of “York touchstones” that are good for making article titles out of.

  • http://null dowlingm

    NDP say no unanimous consent to accelerate the legislation according to the Probe and Wail.

  • http://undefined thewatchmaker

    The union might consider bring York up on charges of “bad faith” bargaining, since they did not make one change to their offer after the mediator made it clear that an impasse would lead to legislation. (CUPE 3903, incidentally, offered two proposals after the mediator asked both sides to compromise, amounting to a concession worth more than $1 million.) And so if the threat of legislation allowed the university to stop bargaining, that would seem to suggest that it amounts to a “substantial interference” of the sort that the BC ruling criticizes. Should be an interesting legal fight.

  • http://null atomeyes99

    BUT WHAT DOES SID RYAN SAY?!?!?!

  • http://undefined EricSmith

    Reported by CBC radio news as well. The Globe article quotes some boilerplate from Hampton about how negotiated settlements are best, and specifically cites as the NDP’s excuse:

    Mr. Hampton rejected the Premier’s contention that the talks were deadlocked because he said York negotiators had not dealt seriously with a revised offer submitted yesterday by CUPE.

    You know what? I say, all binding arbitration, all the time — education, transit, maybe even the entire public service. Not perfect, but it puts a cap on the degree to which the general public, or particular sectors of it, may be acutely effed over. Negotiated settlements might be best, but York students? Second best is clearly good enough for them.

  • http://null rek

    You remember that post (I don’t) but you don’t remember the ones where I’ve explained my position on strikers (and companies like Bell) who take out their frustration on third parties.

  • http://null montauk

    I have noticed the persistent use of the fork line and it does taste a little stale and smell a little of Annex-centrism.

  • http://null thewatchmaker

    That sort of policy would require a constitutional amendment, I think – Canadians are accorded the right to organize in trade unions and to negotiate via the union with their employer, without the interference of government. Arguably, this isn’t a right that CUPE 3903′s members are actually being allowed to enjoy – but it’s one thing to rescind that right because the strike has arguably become a “deadlock”, and another to rescind it as a rule.

  • qviri

    So instead of a 9% salary hike, they were willing to settle for just 7.5%?

  • http://null qviri

    “Reply” function fail :/

  • http://null thewatchmaker

    CUPE 3903 has had a proposal of 8% over 2 years on the table for about a month and a half. They reduced it to 7.25% over 2, which is what York offered in the first 2 years of its 3 year proposal.
    (On another note – I’m totally at a loss to explain where your numbers came from. Where on earth have you seen 9 and 7.5?)