All Posts Tagged With: "York strike 2008"

Student unions pour money into political causes that many members don’t even know about, let alone support

The story made headlines everywhere: it was Feb. 11, 2009, and Daniel Ferman was a member of Drop YFS, a group dedicated to overthrowing the York Federation of Students. Drop YFS was presenting a petition with 5,000 signatures—enough to stage a coup of sorts. They were protesting the student union’s support for a teachers’ strike, which would potentially leave students on the hook for missed class time. They were also against the union backing the Israeli Apartheid Week, which many pro-Israel students despised. As the press conference began, Ferman and his fellow Drop YFS members were faced with a crush of student union members who came in to denounce the petition rally. After a volley of shouting, the crowd moved to the Hillel student lounge where some of the Drop YFS members took refuge. “Students were barricaded in the lounge,” says Ferman, who was Hillel @ York’s president at the time and helped organize the Drop YFS effort. “It got very nasty. Police were called. There were racist slurs.”

Students like Ferman don’t think it’s the student government’s role to take sides on political issues. “I think students have every right to speak up when they feel student dollars are promoting hate and a toxic atmosphere on campus,” says Ferman. Since the 1980s, student unions have been growing in power. They take money from undergraduates every year, which is charged separate from but alongside tuition, and they’re supposed to work for students. Some of that cash funds services, such as health and dental coverage, and student athletics. But much of it goes to advocacy and clubs students may find offensive. “They’d taken very controversial stances on what to fund in pro-life versus pro-choice issues, on Tamil issues going on in Sri Lanka. On every worldwide issue, they’d taken a position,” Ferman says of the YFS, which operates with a $2-million budget. They rarely take the position he would take.

The Canadian Federation of Students—an umbrella organization for student unions—has been heavily criticized for rash advocacy using student funds. The national organization, with its provincial subsidiaries, lobbies on behalf of 600,000 student members across Canada. These “members,” who automatically gain that status if their student union is a member organization, each pay $4.01 per semester to the CFS. In 2010, that came to $3.7 million in membership fee revenue—money used to fund the not-for-profit’s advocacy work. Students also pay an average of $4 per semester to be members of their provincial CFS. That’s before student union fees, which average out at around $30 per student, depending on the school. CFS national chairperson David Molenhuis acknowledges that some of the national campaigns, such as its current effort to fight the Canadian Blood Services’ decision to ban gay men from donating blood, are hot issues—but he doesn’t think they’re controversial. “They attempt to address head-on issues that perhaps college and university administrators don’t feel comfortable addressing,” he says. Some students also feel uncomfortable with their fees going to such politically sensitive issues.

For example, last June, the CFS wrote an open letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty joining the cry for a public inquiry into the “unprecedented curtailment of civil liberties” that took place at the G20. “The federation stands up for the rights of students to participate and to assemble publicly and to participate in demonstrations,” said the letter. “We defend the rights of students to mobilize in public, and the G20 is no exception.”

Some students at the University of Ottawa were upset to learn that not only does the CFS take a political stand on the G20, their own student union spent at least $1,000 to rent a coach bus to shuttle about 50 protesters to Toronto during the G20. Student Peter Flynn, who also heads up the University of Ottawa Campus Conservatives, blasted the expenditure as a “blatant misuse” of student fees. “I highly doubt that every single student who has to pay those fees would be happy to know their money was being spent to send a few individuals to protest for the weekend,” Flynn told the Ottawa Citizen.

York student Gregory Kay was also irked by his student union’s support for G20 protests. The YFS and the student union at the University of Toronto co-sponsored “Toronto vs. the G20: a teach-in.” Class included Black Bloc tactics, which ended up seeing storefronts and public property smashed during the summit in downtown Toronto. “That’s something most students don’t believe in at all,” says Kay, who is the business representative for the YFS board of directors. “Most students aren’t anti-capitalist. They’re not interested in civil disobedience.”

Of course, if students are unhappy with their student government, they aren’t doing much to change it. While voter turnout tends to be higher when contentious issues can be resolved with a ballot, the average voter turnout sits at between 25 and 30 per cent. Many students see student government as too divisive—or too inflexible—to even bother running. Ferman, for one, considered running for a seat on the executive in 2009, but couldn’t put his academic career on hold for a year as the bylaws dictate. He ran for—and won—a seat on the board of directors instead.

“It’s an interesting dichotomy—that the student president isn’t even a student,” he says. “There are lots of inherent problems with the organization, but the lack of flexibility is a major one.” In late August 2010, the university’s ombudsman released a report saying the student union’s electoral process needed a massive makeover, making recommendations Ferman believes might one day legitimize the organization. “Now the onus is on the student federation to take some of these recommendations to heart.”

Photo: Christinne Muschi/Reuters

Unless they do something really wrong or stupid, tenured professors can’t be fired

One of the truisms of labour is that employees who are difficult to replace are least vulnerable to exploitation. Highly skilled employees can negotiate from positions of strength and can defend their individual interests. Less skilled employees, however, are very vulnerable. They need to band together in order to protect their interests – notably security in their employment. This is very often the biggest issue in disputes. Job security is one of the basic motivators of the labour movement.

Some time ago I wrote a piece about the strike at York, and outlined various issues that I feel aren’t properly understood. I think I need to add something new to that list. Casual instructors at York are making demands about job security. Some interpret these demands as insistence on status approaching tenure. I think this is a horrible misunderstanding of the situation, and I’d like to address that idea.

Tenure is a very specific basket of rights and protections enjoyed by professional academics. One of the most significant features is the kind of job security most people can only dream about. Short of doing something really wrong or really stupid (sometimes even then) it’s very hard for a professor to get fired once he or she has tenure. There are historical reasons for this, based around intellectual freedom. The idea is that professional academics should be free from any concern about the popularity or the public perception of their research and work. So even the fear of losing the job itself is eliminated as a constraint.

There are two completely different topics here. The first is job security in context of labour relations, intended to protect the employment of more vulnerable employees. The second is job security in context of intellectual freedom, intended to protect academic integrity. The result may look somewhat similar, but the rationale is completely different – even opposite in some ways. Professional academics are among the least in need of job security for the traditional labour-based reasons, as they are not easily disposed of or replaced. And contract instructors have no need of tenure security for the typical reasons either, as they are not employed to conduct research anyway.

It’s important to point all this out because we need be clear about what contract instructors are actually seeking. Observers get very confused over this and sometimes it seems even the unions speaking on behalf of instructors aren’t very clear. Contract instructors want job security. They want it not because they imagine they deserve something like tenure but rather for all the same reasons that any employee wants job security. They want to not be exploited. And surely that’s understandable.

Tenure is a quirky and specific sort of privilege. And it is a privilege. Those who turn to contract instructors and say, “you haven’t earned that” are quite right, in many ways. But essential job security should not be something that only the privileged few receive. The entire labour movement is geared toward avoiding that. It’s a mistake to imagine that every demand for security is a demand for tenure. Tenure doesn’t have a monopoly on the concept of secure employment. In fact, it’s a tiny exception to the general trend that security of employment is most important for the less privileged.

I’ll add that some find it difficult to think of contract instructors as vulnerable employees, but the fact is that they are. Tenure-stream positions are hard to fill because they are reserved for the most accomplished people in the various fields and there is great competition out there to recruit the best. But contract teaching very often goes to anyone with a PhD and the ability to teach a basic class. The fact is there’s a great oversupply of such people. And so these PhDs, despite their high levels of education, are in fact vulnerable to exploitation. It’s an obvious danger, when there’s a line of qualified people waiting to take your job away, and very little to distinguish between any of you.

Make of all this what you will. Not everyone feels the same way about organized labour, job security as a right, or even the institution of tenure. But please, if you want to understand what’s going on in higher education, don’t confuse demands for job security with demands for tenure. They are not the same thing at all, and never were.

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Questions are welcome at jeff.rybak@utoronto.ca. Even those I don’t address here will still receive replies.

Union can only launch suit once government back-to-work bill passes

The union representing striking workers at York University says it’s preparing a legal challenge of provincial legislation that would force teachers back to work.

CUPE Ontario president Sid Ryan says the government-backed bill, which is expected to pass Thursday, won’t make the issues at the heart of the strike go away.

He says union lawyers are prepping their case, which can only be launched after the bill is passed.

Premier Dalton McGuinty wouldn’t say whether the government has a plan to deal with the potential roadblock.

Outside the provincial legislature, about 100 students and half-a-dozen parents held a rally calling on the province to get classes resumed quickly.

The spectre of court action didn’t seem to faze the students, many who said they’re confident they’ll be back in class Monday.

- The Canadian Press

Hundreds march on provincial legislature; police confirm one arrest

Union officials say at least four people were arrested today at a rally calling on the Ontario government to restart contract negotiations at York University.

More: York University union threatens lawsuit

At least a dozen police cruisers were called in after an apparent confrontation with a police officer as some 200 people marched to the provincial legislature after rallying outside Labour Ministry offices. The march, organized by the union, was briefly stalled before continuing to the legislature.

Police would confirm only one arrest.

Premier Dalton McGuinty recalled the legislature on the weekend to introduce a bill aimed at ending the 12-week strike at Canada’s third-largest university.

The government-backed bill is supported by the Opposition Progressive Conservatives, but the New Democrats oppose it.

That means the legislation may not become law until Thursday, and students will have to wait until next week to return to class.

The union, CUPE Local 3903, says McGuinty should use the time before the bill passes to restart the bargaining process.

Some 50,000 students saw classes cancelled on Nov. 6 when 3,400 teaching assistants, contract faculty and graduate assistants walked off the job.

About 5,000 students were able return this week to attend courses taught by tenured professors under a special deal with the university.

- The Canadian Press

Three rarely-talked-about facts make this strike unique

I was interviewed by a writer for the National Post today for my views on the strike at York, and the threat of other actions elsewhere. I’ll link to the story when it appears (here it is now – they spelled my name wrong) but for now I wanted to share some thoughts I’ve had in connection with the strike. Some ideas came together for the interview that I hadn’t previously sorted out.

For complete OnCampus coverage of the York University strike, click here

I’ve said before that many people don’t understand what’s going on with this strike. I won’t claim I’ve got a monopoly on understanding it, but I do firmly believe it’s a unique kind of strike. It exists on the boundary between labour law and politics, and educational policy and politics. It can’t really be understood from only one of those two perspectives. I’ll illustrate why with a view to three key issues.

Issue One – It’s About the Cost of Education

Viewed only as a labour action you’d certainly tend to think this strike is about compensation for work, wouldn’t you? Not for all the graduate students on strike, it isn’t. This strike includes teaching assistants, research assistants, and contract faculty all in the same bargaining unit. With the exception of the last group, they’re almost all graduate students. These aren’t ordinary workers on strike. These are students in their own right. And they have all the same concerns common to all students, including the cost of their education.

The real cost of education isn’t only tuition. It includes however much it costs to live and support oneself while learning. This is an entirely uncontroversial claim, I hope. Every funding model I’ve ever seen takes into account cost of living, so I’ll assume we can agree on this much.

The pay that graduate students receive for their work as TAs and RAs is part of their funding package for school. These jobs come as part of the support that is guaranteed to every graduate student. The wage they receive, by the hour, isn’t remotely about the real value of the work they do. It’s just an indirect way of defraying the cost of graduate education.

Graduate students in their 20s-30s are living on about $14k/year, after the cost of tuition, books, etc. They almost certainly are, in many cases, assuming additional debt in order to get through their graduate degrees, or else living in poverty to avoid that. I’m not out to promote a position on whether this is a reasonable circumstance or not, because I appreciate it’s a controversial question. But it’s very important to understand that to graduate students this is the issue – how much it costs them to go to school.

So issue one is that this is a cost-of-education strike disguised as a labour action. And undergraduates, screwed by this as they may be, might pause to appreciate the elegance of the move. If undergrads could somehow get away with striking under the Labour Relations Act, in order to lessen the costs of their education, I do imagine they’d jump at the chance.