By Ted Sprague and Ryan Burnham
April 26, 2008

After succeeding in unloading the burden of the under-funded education system onto the shoulders of students, through a $500 increase in tuition fees over 5 years, the McGill and Concordia University administrations think that now it is the workers’ turn. They direct their attacks first against workers who are weaker: part-time faculty at Concordia and Teaching Assistants at McGill. Both universities have refused to agree to better working conditions for those part-time teachers. McGill TAs have been without a contract for 8 months, while Concordia part-time teachers have worked without a contract for 6 years. The latter haven’t seen their salaries go up for the past 6 years. With inflation and rising cost of living, this means Concordia part-time teachers are getting wage cut.

Concordia Part-time Faculty on Strike

“After six years of fruitless negotiations, we have no other choice.” This was the message released by CUPFA (Concordia University Part-Time Faculty Association) on March 26, 2008. The teachers finally decided to start a rotating strike on March 31, 2008. CUPFA is an independent union that represents over 900 part-time faculty members who teach 40% of Concordia courses. It is the first time in the history of Concordia that faculties are preparing to walk out of their classrooms. In 2007, the union voted in favor of a strike due to the static negotiations with the university’s administration. Concordia has a bad record when it comes to negotiating with its unions. The administration has gone as far as to appeal court rulings on grievances by the union several times, costing the university millions of dollars in legal fees which otherwise could have been used to pay for increase in salary for the teachers.

Concordia part-time teachers have not seen their salaries increase since January 2003, while at the same time workload and class size have increased significantly. They are not provided with adequate offices to fulfill their teaching responsibilities and meet with their students. Offices that do exist must be shared by several teachers. They are small spaces with no telephones, worn-out computers, no filing cabinets, and few desks or often not even a place to hang a coat. Part-time faculty have no pro-rated benefits in the area of medical health insurance, parental leave, disability insurance, or pension plans. To add salt to the wound, part-time faculty are treated as precarious labour and have no job security.

Supported by its members, the Concordia Student Union, and two student faculties, the part-time teachers’ union took to the picket line for almost two weeks. The union also received strong support from many students on the picket lines. The union continued to picket every day for almost two weeks. With pressure mounting to sign a new collective agreement, the final scheduled negotiating session was set for April 9, 2008. A contingent of teachers and students took the line to Concordia’s Loyola campus to demonstrate outside the meeting. In a very typical manner, nothing was settled and the union looked towards more pressure tactics.

In a surprise move, union President Maria Peluso, announced April 10, 2008 that the teachers would be putting an end to their strike action for the remainder of the semester so students are not punished for the administration’s refusal to meet their demands. The announcement came just prior to NDP leader Jack Layton taking the stage as a part of a speaker series at Concordia. After Peluso finished her inspiring speech, the crowd erupted in support for the union. Peluso did hint, however, toward more tactics in the Fall. It will be very interesting to see how the union makes an example of the administration for such dirty tactics in negotiating with its workers.

McGill University Dirty Tactics

More than 2,000 Teaching Assistants at McGill, who are organized under AGSEM (Association of Graduate Students Employed at McGill), have been without contract for more than 8 months. The union’s attempts to negotiate in a good faith was replied by McGill with sheer arrogance and disrespect. During the 6-month period of negotiation, the admin either didn’t show up to the negotiation table or simply came unprepared at all. So, on April 8, with 79% strike vote, the TAs went on strike.

The McGill administration has been trying to portray the TAs’ demand to the public as simply a matter of salary increase as it knowingly attempts to exploit current public prejudice that unions are all about getting more money. This is far from the truth as many of the demands are about improving working conditions and the quality of education at McGill. The TAs demand paid training to ensure safety in laboratories they are teaching and improve their teaching skills. One of the major demand is a workload form to specify their duties and the time it will take to finish those tasks. This workload form will be a step forward to ensure that no TAs is being overworked without fair compensation and that each student receives sufficient attention from the TAs. Other demands include caps on class sizes as too many classes and labs are overcrowded, office spaces so that the TAs have appropriate space to meet with students, and a voice at the Board of Governor. On each one of those demands, McGill didn’t move at all, therefore forcing the union to take a strike action.

It is important to point out that all indications have suggested that McGill did intend to force the union to go on strike and break the union. They had no intention of negotiating with the union. Months before the strike vote was taken, McGill has already prepared itself to deal with the strike. To undermine the strike, McGill forced course supervisors and faculty members to perform TAs’ duties (i.e. to scab). Knowing full well that they are walking on a thin line of breaking the labor code, McGill was adamant to break the power of the strike just to make a point, even if it means spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in a court. For McGill, going to court is a risk they are willing to take if they can break the idea that “McGill works because TAs do”.

Montreal has always been the hotbed of social movement in North America. This also means that we can expect some of nastiest dirtiest tactics employed by the establishment to break the movement. McGill is no different. In the first few days of the strike, all TAs who were hired as exam supervisors, a job which is not unionized under AGSEM, were sacked. A week later, TAs were fired from non-TA jobs they have at University (seasonal instructors, research assistants, casual labors, etc). This is McGill’s way of saying: “You don’t have a right to strike. If you do strike, we will make sure that you won’t be employed here at McGill.” You don’t have to be in the union to understand that this is clear outright discrimination against union members. One may ask: why does McGill risk itself going to court against charges on violation of basic human rights? Again, it is a risk worth taken from their perspective.

However, far from breaking the union, the strike and the intimidations from McGill have solidified the union and increased the militancy amongst its members. For many of the TAs, this is their first experience in the union and being on strike. The nature of graduate studies means that there is a fast turnover in the union membership, every 2-4 years. In addition to this, many of the TAs are from out of Quebec (and from the States) where the labor militant tradition is nowhere close to that of Quebec. The level of support from undergraduate students have also been phenomenal. Suffice to say, the spirit of striking TAs is still high as this article is written.

Education System in Crisis

All these attacks on part-time teachers are happening against a backdrop of rampant cuts in social spending, most notably in education and healthcare. Contrary to what the government wants us to believe, we do have the resources to afford free accessible quality education and better working conditions for teachers. Eliminating tuition fees would cost the government $550 million. This represents less than one per cent of their budget. To put this in context, the highly unpopular tax cuts for the rich introduced in the last provincial budget cost $900 million a year. With the $900 million dollar, not only could we abolish tuition fees, but we could also improve the working conditions of the teachers.

Faced with an ever increasing deficit in their budgets, both McGill and Concordia have chosen to take the easy way out, which is to punish students and teachers, instead of standing together with them to pressure the government for more funding. However, just like one cannot expect a tiger to eat lettuce, we cannot expect the decision-makers at McGill and Concordia to stand with students and teachers because they have been utterly divorced from the community they claim to represent. McGill Principal, Heather Munroe-Blum, is paid an annual salary of $362,500. In addition, she gets a $48,000 allowance for expenses incurred when hosting PR parties at her home, a $16,000 car allowance, $30,000 for housekeeping and $1,500 for gardening. With such exorbitant income, how can she relate to struggling students with $20,000 loans and McGill workers who make 20-30 grand a year? The composition of McGill and Concordia Board of Governors (BoG) shows clearly why these public institutions are run like a private company. The majority of these unelected members of BoG are CEOs or board members of big corporations such as David P. O’Brien, Chairman of EnCana Corporation (Concordia), and Darren Entwistle, President and CEO of Telus (McGill). We are not only facing a financial crisis in our education system, but also a democratic crisis in which our public schools have ceased to be public.

We need an education system where its teachers and support staff are being treated with respect and dignity, not only in words but in deeds, that means being able to provide its workers with better working conditions. Public schools should be public not only in concept but also in practice. This means they have to be free and accessible to all who choose to attend. This means they have to be democratic: all BoG members have to be elected and subject to recall, and their salaries should not be more than the average salaries of the skilled workers at school.

Teachers and Students Unite!

These concerted attacks on our education system have to be fought in a concerted fashion by those who have the same interest: teachers and students; as the former sees their working condition deteriorating and the latter sees their tuition fee increasing. While there has been a great display of solidarity between teachers and students, there has yet to be a concrete front that can unite students and teachers unions in their struggle. This is the objective weakness of the current movement, one that has to be overcome. Taking one step further, there is a need to expand this movement to become a social movement that includes all workers. The defense of our public education cannot be limited to students and teachers. Without the full support of workers at large, a decisive victory will be impossible to obtain.