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York No Longer Forked

By David Topping

It took a few days, but just moments ago back-to-work legislation finally passed at Queen’s Park to force an end to the York University strike, with the Globe reporting that classes will resume Monday. Way to go, CUPE.

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  • http://null mister j

    More like, way to go York

  • http://null SeangSTM

    Exactly. I love how CUPE is being painted as the bad guy here. Let’s remember that York ALREADY has the money from the enrolled students from this “lost” semester…money they put to good use by employing the media to deflect the real issues of the strike.
    Like the entire notion that students are suffering from this strike action. FYI – TAs are students too, and they’re the students who’ve stuck with York for years to get their PhDs.
    And how can CUPE negotiate with a university president who effectively puts his fingers in his ears and bellows “I can’t hear you!” York failed to show up at the bargaining table more times than not. And the university president didn’t release a statement on the strike until 2 months in…
    The real loser in this thing is York: they’ve pretty much shot themselves (and future students) in the foot by making York as unattractive as possible for good quality PhD candidates – the heartblood of every university worth the price of tuition.
    Sad.

  • http://null montauk

    The thing with York is that it’s a piece of evil corporate crap and it behaved exactly as I’d expect, right down to our dickhead president hiding like a groundhog the whole time.
    The thing with CUPE is that I expected much better. I did not expect the constant rah-rah-revolution rhetoric (i.e., today: “The State Security Apparatus beat down and arrested us”), the extraordinary short-sightedness with regard to undergrads (i.e., how to preserve relations with them) or the confusion of their tactics (an ideological strike against neoliberalism and corporatization? Or a strike for better wages, job security, etc?) which proved to mean quite different strikes in the middle and end of the game.
    The people who claim to be the universally moral superiors will always have a harder time coming off unhated unless they really, really, really watch their game. Which didn’t happen.

  • http://null wmolls

    You don’t like it? Sue.
    http://www.yorktookmymoney.com/

  • David Topping

    It is sad. And I think that all parties involved came out of this looking like shit. But I think that CUPE 3903 undoubtedly lost the most—and that includes losing the public relations battle, and for good reason. The reason I linked to Torontoist’s Villains entry on CUPE 3903 when I said “Way to go, CUPE” was because Christopher Bird pretty much summed up, in December, and with an impressive amount of prescience, the whole thing for me (and many others):

    Some place the blame for the York University teaching assistants strike on York University’s administration, and it’s certainly fair to assign fault to York’s labour-hostile environment. But it takes two sides to poison a dialogue, and CUPE 3903′s staggering sense of self-importance makes solidarity with the strikers impossible. It wasn’t York University, after all, who rejected arbitration. The union did that, and they probably did it because the union wants a two-year contract to harmonize York’s contract term with the rest of the other TA unions in the province so they can organize a mass strike in 2010. (There certainly wasn’t any other good reason to avoid arbitration.) When York allowed foreign students due to graduate in December to complete their degrees (students who are paying tens of thousands of dollars per year and who are mostly from poor countries), CUPE issued a statement calling it “unconscionable.” This mix of high-handed rhetoric and blunt tactical maneuvering has turned off even traditional labour supporters such as the Toronto Star from the union and conditioned a generation’s worth of students to consider unions as spoiled complainers. And when the government likely passes back-to-work legislation in January, it’ll all have been for absolutely nothing. Way to go, guys.

  • http://undefined mister j

    Point taken. I suppose the cliche is apt here: there’s at least two sides to any story. Who to believe? By the way, I still remember when I was grad student at York and getting an email from a fellow student using the word “oppressed” to describe their position as a TA. If it weren’t so sad, it’d be funny: think of the ‘ghettos’ that surround York! Now there’s “oppression”!