Can professors be scabs?

McGill university has taken strike negotiating to a new level of nastiness with the firing of dozens of striking teaching assistants from non-union jobs.

Teaching assistants, represented by the Association of Graduate Students Employed at McGill (AGSEM), are often also hired separately as exam invigilators. Invigilators are not represented by the union.

McGill fired 72 AGSEM members from their separate invigilator positions after the strike began April 7. Sessional instructors who also work as teaching assistants also lost their summer contracts.

AGSEM disputed the university’s interpretation of the Quebec labour code as the work stoppage continues into its fourth week. AGSEM says the firings are a violation of Section 110 of the Quebec labour code that states: “No person shall cease to be an employee for the sole reason that he has ceased to work in consequence of a strike or lockout.”

Deputy provost Morton J. Mendelson disagrees, and said the university’s actions are not only within the boundaries of the law, but are also mandated by the provincial labour code.

Defending the university’s position in a letter published in the Montreal Gazette on Friday, Mendelson cited section 109 of the labour code: “For the duration of a strike declared in accordance with this Code or a lock-out, every employer is prohibited from … (c) utilizing, in an establishment where a strike or lock-out has been declared, the services of an employee who is a member of the bargaining unit then on strike or locked out.”

“Quebec labour law prohibits an employer from hiring a striking worker,” Mendelson told Maclean’s. “The labour code does not distinguish between work that is being struck and work that is not [being] struck.”

Sessional instructors hired for the winter term have not lost their positions, suggesting that those who were working before the strike started will be kept on. However, an email sent to Maclean’s by a McGill teaching assistant suggests some inconsistency. The TA was removed this week from a position in the library, where he had been working for most of the year.

“I am frustrated and disturbed by all of this. I am disappointed by the bullying tactics this university is using against its own students,” he wrote. (When Maclean’s contacted him for further comment, he no longer wanted to comment on the strike. His name has been withheld for this reason.)