Tag Archives: accessibility

York students do deserve better – That’s why instructors are on strike Reply

by • Strike 2018 • Tags: , , , ,

April 30, 2018

By Dana Phillips

It’s the refrain we hear over and over again: “those poor students, caught in the middle of persistent labour disruptions at York university.”  What follows is often, as in Martin Regg Cohn’s recent Toronto Star column, a rebuke of striking union workers for being so darn unreasonable, under the thin guise of balanced journalism.  Sure, goes the argument, teaching staff have legitimate concerns, and precarious work is a problem. But why does CUPE local 3903 insist on being such a troublemaker?

I would be the first to argue that students do deserve better, and I’m confident that my fellow CUPE members, by and large, feel the same way. Many of us are students ourselves; we are also experiencing disruptions to our programs of study, in addition to significant losses in income, and ongoing economic uncertainty. Nearly all of us work closely with students whom we care about and want to see succeed. This is no small part of the reason that we continue to stand up against an administration that is in the business of lining its own coffers at the expense of quality higher education.

Like all unions, CUPE 3903 has its own internal politics, and these have in times past been admittedly problematic (as has York’s own governance). But to suggest that the union’s grievances therefore have no merit is simply fallacious. CUPE 3903 is not an outlier, as Regg Cohn suggests—it is a sector leader.  The hard won rights of CUPE 3903 union members have set a precedent for precarious academic workers across the country at a time when the rapid corporatization of universities should be what has us all alarmed and outraged. This is why arbitration is not a good option for CUPE 3903; you can’t lead the way through a decision-making process that bends towards the status quo.

One of the biggest points of dispute in this strike relates to the job security of Unit 2 contract faculty. York argues that providing opportunities for experienced contract instructors to transition into tenure-track positions (in lieu of the usual open search process, but with the same high bar for granting tenure) threatens standards of teaching excellence for students. And yet, York relies on contract instructors in short-term, low-paid positions to teach more than a third of its classes (more than half if you count teaching assistants). If York is truly concerned about teaching excellence, one wonders why the administration is currently fighting to have more courses taught by full-time graduate students from Unit 1, who are generally less qualified than the Unit 2 contract instructors they would be replacing.  There is nothing good for students about having “professors” who are overworked, underpaid, and unsure of where their next paycheck is coming from.

CUPE 3903’s proposals for Units 1 and 3, meanwhile, focus on ensuring accessible and equitable access to graduate education for future students—i.e. current undergraduates.  While CUPE looks towards the future, however, York and much of the media remain fixated on the strike’s most immediate impacts, thereby losing sight of the deeper issues threatening public education for years to come.

One of the problems with opinions like those of Regg Cohn is that they assume that striking workers are primarily to blame for what is happening to students at York. This is nothing new; it comes up all the time on the picket lines.  Perhaps it should come as no surprise that it is easiest to blame those who are out in the cold day after day, physically obstructing the way to classes, degrees—business as usual.  It seems as though these are the people that chose to mess everything up for everybody.

What, though, about the choice of York administrators to refuse to come to the bargaining table for weeks on end, while CUPE remains ready and willing to negotiate? What about the economic and educational systems that place highly educated and skilled people—the people we hope our students will become—in the position of struggling to make ends meet? The ability of these causes to remain invisible is what gives them their power and privilege.

The university and the public are rightfully concerned about the well-being of York’s undergraduate students at this difficult time. Unfortunately, they seem much less concerned about the well-being of those who provide the bulk of those students’ education, and who, in many ways, reflect those students’ own precarious future.

Letter to our Students from Colleagues at the Faculty of Education Reply

by • Strike 2018 • Tags: , , , , , ,

April 9, 2018

On April 5th, 2018, colleagues from the Faculty of Education, York University, met to discuss our ongoing concern with the Administration’s troubling tactics during the labour dispute. These tactics reverberate through all levels of collegial governance and democratic process, and affect every aspect of our work. Having entered into its fourth week, the Administration embarked on the dangerous wager of forcing ratification and, in the meantime, has done little to improve the climate of negotiation between itself, the university community, and CUPE 3903.

Within this context, we want to express our support and solidarity with our students and colleagues of CUPE 3903. We do so as a commitment to our responsibility as faculty for the well-being of the University, and against the unfair and precarious situations of employment at the University. As professors, we feel it is our duty to protect the University’s educational principles and to support our students and colleagues by adhering to 1) collegial governance, 2) principles of academic integrity, and 3) our responsibility as educators to our students. We reaffirm our role and responsibility as faculty because these three aspects have been under threat during this dispute.

As scholars, professors, and instructors of education, we are uniquely positioned to gage the damage that recent events pose for academic integrity and scholarly innovation that are the hallmarks of York University’s highly regarded reputation. Our worry is that this dispute is not merely about providing fair conditions for workers, but increasingly about the Administration’s re-alignment of faculty governance. It seems to us that the University is being run less and less by professors and students, who are invested in educational and academic concerns, and more by people in management and commerce, guided by the Board of Governors, with little or no experience in or sense of responsibility for academic and educational matters. Such a re-alignment betrays the longstanding right to have educational and academic autonomy from the Board of Governors for which faculty and others have previously fought. This managerial and economic trend will not serve faculty and students well.

As professors of a Faculty of Education who have long-standing experience and engagement, sharing with multiple stakeholders, in public schools, communities, and educational sectors, we roundly reject the Administration’s rush to undermine faculty governance and educational authority. Our position aligns with those expressed in numerous universities and by school teachers worldwide, some of whom are protesting in the streets today, the devastatingly failed project to make education profitable. Rendering education a commercial project, and putting financial concerns before pedagogical ones, privileges the few while denigrating the promise education holds for so many. Our students, young people, and children stand to lose the most from the reckless actions of the Administrators and the Board of Governors. These managerial actions, lacking foresight, have caused so many teachers, educators, and scholars everywhere to take a decisive stand for the idea and ideals of education, academic integrity, and free enquiry underlying the right to public education in just and democratic societies.

We urge the Administration to respect collegial processes and return to the bargaining table, in good faith and fair play, to lessen the turmoil, confusion, and conflict we are all experiencing. Labour disputes are important events that help us to think about ourselves and the society in which we want to live; they also take the temperature of our foundational institutions and the core values driving them. A strike gives us pause to reflect on the state of our academic organization and how we belong and commit to it. For many of us at York University, this dispute exposes the deliberate collapsing of collegial structures into managerialism, and how our talents, which defy economy, are exploited for their serviceability to the bottom-line. A strike also reminds us (because we all tend to forget) that nothing in life is given. Our lives are all precarious (in different ways) and, in a democratic society, we have a right to speak of our needs and a responsibility to take care of each other. Our Administration needs to remember — indeed, we all need to remember — that when you give people a living, dignifying wage, and treat them like people with minds and dreams and the promise of a shared and sustainable present and future, rather than seeing them as economic “units” and income generators, we provide the fundamental conditions for education to be possible.

In solidarity with teachers and students everywhere,

Steve Alsop,
Sarah Barrett
Warren Crichlow
Roopa Desai Trilokekar
Mario DiPaolantonio
Nombuso Dlamini
Lisa Farley
Jen Jenson
Joy Mannette
Aparna Mishra Tarc
Naomi Norquay
Gillian Parekh
Tina Rapke
Theresa Shanahan
Kurt Thumlert
Laura Wiseman