Rocket Talk: Can Sunday Subway Service Start Sooner?
Newsstand: November 19, 2009
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The Art of Not Knowing
Scott Library, York University campus.
After eighty-five bitter days, government back-to-work legislation has brought the CUPE 3903 strike at York University to its ignominious end.
Although the anti-strike group YorkNotHostage trumpets the legislation as a victory for students, York University President Mamdouh Shoukri looks to the future, and CUPE 3903 congratulates itself for taking the high road, the strike is a disaster from any perspective.
York's undergraduate students have already suffered tremendous losses. Despite the university's policies geared toward preserving academic integrity during what York euphemistically terms "disruptions," the strike went on too long for students simply to pick up where they left off three months ago. Compressed fall and winter terms will require students to absorb knowledge, write essays, and study for exams in a few short weeks, an exhausting exercise that will challenge York's best students and overwhelm its most vulnerable—difficulties that expanded counselling services and academic workshops will do little to alleviate.
The extension of the academic year until June 2, 2009 will reduce summer employment opportunities that undergraduate students—members of York's true working class—rely on to pay next year's academic expenses. Premier McGuinty's promise of "flexible" OSAP loans rings hollow to strike-affected students who have already gone deeply into debt to pay for their education. Students applying to post-graduate programs risk losing out because the strike has prevented them from completing courses and obtaining transcripts and letters of reference by the normal deadlines for doing so. On top of everything else, students face the possibility that the value and reputation of their York degree will have been eroded by the long strike.
Ross Building, York University campus.
For his part, York President Mamdouh Shoukri has acknowledged that the university has suffered a terrible blow to its reputation. With applications already down between fifteen per cent and forty per cent for next year, York must either reduce its academic standards or offer fewer courses—a catch-22 because either outcome will drive away the highly qualified students York seeks to attract. York has also earned itself an anti-labour reputation for its part in the deadlocked negotiations, despite having successfully bargained new collective agreements in 2008 with its largest non-academic unions, including CUPE 1356 (the union representing maintenance, security, and parking employees), and the York University Staff Association.
And the union? Having "demanded the impossible" and gambled everything only to end up losing it all in the end, CUPE 3903 is humiliated and broke. Unless the local can extract more money from CUPE National (not so likely given that 3903's parent organization has already hemorrhaged millions of dollars in picket pay and refused to pick up the tab for an unwinnable legal challenge to back-to-work legislation), 3903 members will face significant monthly dues increases at a time when they can least afford them.
Despite 3903's decisive defeat of York's "final offer" at a supervised vote on January 20-21—the union's single victory during the strike—the union has fractured along ideological lines, with radicals and reactionaries squaring off over whether the union went too far or not far enough.
At the same time, by striking itself into a three-year collective agreement, 3903 has cut itself out of participating meaningfully in university-sector coordinated bargaining in 2010, a year when member locals of the Ontario University Workers Coordinating Committee plan to negotiate simultaneously in order to maximize bargaining gains.
Perhaps worst of all, 3903 faces the likelihood of massive job losses among its ranks in the coming year, with declining enrolment and budget cuts hitting the vulnerable contract faculty whose precarious jobs the union was supposed to safeguard.
Scott Library, York University campus.
How did all of this happen? How did CUPE 3903 find itself striking to lose? Although the union blames York for refusing to bargain, 3903 was equally intransigent, forbidding its own bargaining team from negotiating until well into the strike and adding new demands even in the final days before back-to-work legislation was introduced. A related problem is that the union was never able to reconcile what it saw as its larger fight against neoliberalism with the more immediate need to negotiate a collective agreement its members could live with. In the end, CUPE 3903 appeared to go over the ideological deep end in a strike that has cost York its reputation and students much of their academic year, and that will result in the union ending up with a collective agreement that many members believe would have been better had the union abandoned some of its dogmatism and committed itself more purposefully to bargaining.
Torontoist contributor Amy Lavender Harris is a longtime member and former Chair of CUPE 3903.
All photos by Michael Chrisman from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.
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Good article. It seems absurd how some of our country's smartest people could not foresee how their actions were producing effects that directly contradicted their goals.
Yeah. Ideology is like that. We got ideologically carried away. You have to admire what we accomplished.
Like the article says -- yet far more. As non-essential workers legislated back to work, we 3903s are responsible for a BTWL precedent getting established that could be used against future locals. Despite future locals bargaining in good faith -- if the appearance of deadlock should arise? Those future locals might get legislated back to work just like we did.
How's that strike as a blow against the Ontario labour movement? Even though we didn't mean it -- you have to admire any blow so tremendously struck.
And there's no avoiding it. We were going to challenge and obtain injunction against BTWL -- on false grounds only York was deadlocked while we were ever ready & eager to bargain. Then we changed our minds -- due to grave alleged concerns with our students' welfare. The truth, though? Quite clearly stated in our January 28 3903 Strike News: "We have been advised by our legal counsel that seeking an injunction to prevent the passage of back-to-work legislation is not the best use of our time, resources, and talents."
Meaning we've got no case. Like, how impressed could a judge be hearing how we bragged and made t-shirts about demanding the impossible; how we refused to let our bargaining team bargain; how, just prior BTWL, we had decided to return to our pre-strike November 5 impossible demands? Everything designed not to compromise towards the best possible deal for our own membership -- but to roll back the "neo-liberal" university. To cripple York.
Don't go believing we're finished. Don't go thinking our ideology has been compromised by BTWL. As declared by our Stewards' Council in our February 2 3903 News: "It is important that the mobilization that took place during the strike can be sustained and built upon, for the sustenance of our union. We may have lost this particular battle, but the class war is far from over."
It's interesting that in the author's attempt to be "objective" they've downplayed the university's intransigence in negotiating (umm, no, the union conceded on more than the university did if you actually examine the negotiation record).
Secondly, the "larger fight against neoliberalism" is described here in quite abstract ways. The author should have realized that the students themselves face negative consequences from neoliberalism's effect on the university. Maybe they prefer 500 seat classrooms with a prof they'll never know, where they can surf on the internet while watching lecture notes scroll across the screen way down at the bottom of the room? Think about it. The article should have considered the selfishness of students who just care about getting the piece of paper rather than what's happening to education quality. But I guess that's for the next generation to fight for?
Maybe the students "caught in the middle" as they always complained, should band together and do something about these problems.... but they're too busy on Facebook.
You seem to assume that:
a) the phenomenon of students attending university just for the end-goal of a diploma is a student-created phenomenon, and not a social and economic one
b) students can afford to fight the good fight for contentious abstract principles about education instead of putting their money and effort into getting the thing which will get them a job, and if they aren't in the considerably privileged position of being able to do that, they are selfish (I personally am working 3 jobs, I'm a full-time student, and I cannot afford to spend my time at another ineffectual rally for something that no one actually agrees on.)
c) that the actions of CUPE 3903 are synonymous with improving education quality for undergrads (this is contentious to say the least, particularly given how our year is getting mauled and the university will be making it easier than ever for student to coast by on appeals)
d) that CUPE actually reached out to undergrads during the strike in a genuinely sympathetic, accessible way (i.e., no "The State Security Apparatus beat us down") that focused on the needs and interests of undergrads - and not making it just another opportunity for CUPE to present arguments about the administration's various sins
e) that dissing undergrads for using a social networking site, and implying that they are lazy and selfish, is probably not the radical new thinking about education you're looking for, nor does it incite undergrads to pitch in. In fact, those statements you made about undergrads are really quite telling about your attitudes toward the people whose conditions you purport to be improving.
I'm pro-union and I'm pretty sympathetic to the tough ride CUPE has had and how shitty Shoukri et al have been, but you've got to be kidding me if the villain you want mentioned are the undergrads.
It's hardly appropriate to lay all the blame for the current diploma tunnel-vision at the feet of students. Unless standardized testing, mass education, employer expectations and education policies don't exist the problem starts way before freshman orientation and will continue long past convocation.
Seconded about those photos. I think that third picture's been run in every story about York for the past 3 months. Yes, I get it, it's a gloomy period but the campus doesn't look like an old sewage plant EVERYWHERE.
We've run that photo once before, as a Daily Photoist; a similar photo shot elsewhere on campus by the same photographer was run as a Daily Photoist once before that. That's it.
FYI Last comment was supposed to be in response to james a
"York must either reduce its academic standards or offer fewer courses"
It seems to me there is a third option available: smaller class sizes until enrollment recovers. Wonder if York will consider it though.. probably not.
Ps, what's with the photos?
I'm sorry, but unless you've spent a million years in a post-secondary institution, that neo-liberalism essay sounds like it was written by a crazy person. I think maybe some of these people need to poke their heads out of their academic bubble for a while.
i'm in love with you
York should be closed. It's always been a horrible school and the epicentre for anti-semitism and terrorist recruiting in the GTA. Combine that with the insane Marxists amongst the tenured and untenured faculty and there is nothing of value on campus. But since it's the university at Jane & Finch, there never has been anything of value there.
The striking grad students should have all of their grants, loans, and scholarships pulled. They want a strike, they'll get a strike! The Province should also ban public servants from unionizing, closed shop agreements, and strikes. Give the Marxists no quarter.
I would like to remind our (Firefox-using) readers about this.
Jonathan: RC's comments are one of my favourite things about this site. I guess I just like seeing people get their feathers ruffled.
Anyway, a lot of equally extreme leftist sentiments seem to get by without the editors offering up censorship tools to keep the bad thoughts out.
Oh, I also find RealityCheck to be consistently entertaining (and never more so than when he called me a "Hamas shill"), but I'm confident that there are readers who are turned off of the site, or at least our comments sections, by that sort of rhetoric, and I want them to remind them that the comments sections are customizable.
I hate Marxism, but I love liberty more, so even I think your comment is over the top. Shutting Marxists out of academia is no better than trying to prohibit pro-Israeli professors from teaching in Ontario universities.
Sounds like sooooomebody didn't get accepted to York and is a little peeved about it.
There are some fair criticism about 3903 in here (about tension between different arms of the union, about re-tabling elements that had been removed) but where's the analysis of the administration? York President Shoukri said to the Toronto Star a few days ago that York stopped bargaining in the final week, despite requests from both McGuinty and 3903, because his lawyers told him it might jeopardize the back-to-work-legislation. Given that York bargained for about 10 days over the course of the 90 day strike, might we care to guess whether this was the strategy that the lawyers had been advising, and that York had been following, all along?
3903's proposals were a bit much, yes, at least for the first month or so of the strike. But by the end, those proposals were reduced to an annual rate of growth that was nearly identical to the contract signed in 2005. Conversely, York's proposals offered virtually no change between November 5th and January 8th. The rule in collective bargaining is to start with a ceiling (the union) and a basement (the employer) and then start conceding ground, since movement by one begets movement from the other. So it seems that York never actually intended to bargain.
Your post ignores CUPE's most odious demand, which was never changed: some 70 special renewable contracts, which would effectively award full-time employment on the basis of seniority, rather than merit.
You know, I used to really like this blog, so much so that I contributed to it for a very (VERY) short period of time.
But lately the biased attitudes on this site have become almost embarrassingly transparent (the photos guys, you have to be fucking kidding me).
Although there are many standard responses to your complaint (e.g. Torontoist rarely makes any pretense to objective reporting), I'd be interested in hearing you explain in more detail the ways in which you feel Torontoist has changed.
Some people only dislike hearing opinions when those opinions aren't the same as their own.
These photos are stunning, and frankly, exactly what York looked like during the strike... as they were taken during the strike at York. Besides, they're beautiful!
Thank you all for your comments.
In response to those who commented on the York administration's alleged intransigence or the union's alleged greed, let me say that both of these subjects have been well covered elsewhere.
I have focused instead on the strike's consequences for two under-represented groups -- undergraduate students at York, and the broader membership of CUPE 3903 -- who have paid the largest price for what amounts to an ideological stand-off.
As someone calling her(?) self 'Cupe Doll' has written over at the http://yorkstrike2008.wordpress.com blog (a main hub of discussion throughout the strike) the strike has produced two major effects:
1. Despite 3903's claim to have been fighting for the benefit of undergraduate students, the strike was timed to maximize damage to the academic year. To date the union has abrogated its culpability entirely, either denying that students have suffered or claiming instead that York is the real villain.
2. Despite claiming to fight against the casualization of labour, the union has only managed to guarantee that many contract faculty will become labour casualties. As has been reported widely, the strike has led to a sharp drop in applications and expected enrolment, meaning that many of us will not have teaching work at York next year. Some in the union have claimed this is fear-mongering, but almost every contract faculty member I know is already scrambling to find teaching work elsewhere. What good are better dental benefits when the fight to win them costs you your job?
Thank you for the sober, even-handed presentation. Since you're obviously familiar with the Yorkstrike2008 forum, you probably know I'm not as even-handed. Nor sober.
Kidding aside. Because how ideologically deadlocked 3903 and York were from the outset, I predicted in November that there could be no negotiated compromise at the bargaining table. Initially, forum participants thought I was utilizing scare tactics. Eventually, everyone realized differently.
While I'm not sure I ever argued the strike produced two -- or any other number -- of effects, what you wrote directly above does remind me of the slogans/koans I produced to expose glaring contradictions in our 3903 rhetoric.
3903s are against students paying so much for education -- that's why we ruined the education students already paid for.
3903s are determined to protect vulnerable contract faculty from labour casualization -- that's why we had to turn so many contract faculty into labour casualties.
We 3903s are so determined to combat the false ideological fiction of "neo-liberalism" -- we can't stop to notice how we are the closest there is to a neo-liberal youth movement. Striking out as a leisure ruling-elite exploiting the fruits of student labour — the very means of student productivity.
Anyway. I intend this comment to be my last anywhere concerning this expletive strike. Maybe it's true you can't make an omelet without breaking eggs. Fact is, we 3903s have broken everyone's eggs including our own -- and made no real omelet whatsoever. While the false omelet we imagine in the sky remains imaginary regardless what we destroy.
I'm almost glad so many contract faculty (including me) will go without jobs next year @ York. Well deserved. When "valued educators" turn to ruining our students' education -- that's no better than fire fighters turning to arson.