From:
news and announcements for members of CUPE local 3903
[3903NEWS@YorkU.CA]
on behalf of Michelle Lowry [mlowry@YorkU.CA]
Sent:
November 15, 2000 9:22 AM
To:
3903NEWS@YORKU.CA
Subject:
solidarity - Letter to President Marsden re: CUPE 3903 Strike
(fwd)
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Forwarded message ----------
President
Marsden,
I
wish to express my support for the striking workers of CUPE 3903 and to
express
my grave concern as a faculty member working in the Ontario
university
system at the actions taken by the administration of York
University
which have led to this most recent job action.
As
many others who have written to you over the past three weeks have
expressed,
the administration's treatment of the TAs and Lecturers at
York
is deplorable for a
number
of reasons. Your administration failed to begin bargaining with the
union
in a timely fashion, resulting in a situation in which the entire
academic
term might be jeopardized for both graduate and undergraduate
students.
The attempt of your administration to rollback the indexation of
the
tuition rebate on future tuition fee increases
(and, for that matter,
to
maintain full post-residency fees and to charge full fees over the
summer!)
has the effect of making graduate students
take
on further amounts of unsupportable debt, while at the same time
making
the (financial) conditions of graduate research as difficult as
possible.
Finally, the entire position adopted by the York administration
seems
to contravene in a fundamental way the educational mission of the
university
as a whole. If the aim of the university is to provide the
highest
level of teaching and training possible, while also maintaining a
productive
environment for research and for the generation of new ideas, I
cannot
imagine a more illogical way of expressing this than by trying to
squeeze
as many dollars as possible out of those that can least afford
it--the
TAs and lecturers responsible for 40% of the teaching at your
university.
But then you've probably heard all this before.
As
a faculty member at a neighbouring university, I'd like to give you a
slightly
different perspective on the strike. York University has long
been
known for its innovative graduate programs in the Social Sciences and
the
Humanities (the areas that I know best) and has attracted some of the
best
young minds from around the world to study in programs like Social
and
Political Thought and new programs like the one in Communication and
Culture.
The success of these programs is the result of a great deal of
work
on the part of faculty members, lecturers and the graduate students
involved
in them. Many of my very best undergraduate students have
expressed
an interest in attending York University as graduate
students.
In the past, I would have had no difficulty in encouraging them
to
do so. In the present circumstances, I can in all good conscience no
longer
recommend York to my students given the administration's treatment
of
its graduate students and its attitude towards contract labour more
generally.
I'm sure that I am not the only faculty member in Ontario and
in
Canada to feel this way. It seems clear to me that the actions of your
administration
over the past three weeks (and its inaction over the past
several
months) will damage your graduate programs for years to come and
will
jeopardize programs that many people have worked long and hard to
establish
as nationally and internationally renowned sites for teaching
and
research.
It
also seems clear to me that this strike will have a direct effect on
faculty
morale and on your ability to recruit a new generation of faculty
members
(some of whom are already employed by you as Contract Faculty) who
will
be responsible for leading York in the twentieth-first century. For
many
years, universities have been in a position in which the supply of
highly
qualified graduates of doctoral programs has been greater than the
number
of available faculty positions. This is changing in a major
way:
universities, especially Canadian universities, are likely to find it
difficult
to fill all the positions that will open up over the next decade
and
are likely to be at a disadvantage in the global competition for the
very
best faculty members. Given this fact, it seems completely reasonable
that
the university would encourage the promotion of its dedicated and
talented
contract faculty to at least some of these full time
positions.
By not doing this, and by poisoning the atmosphere of
collegiality
at the university through its actions toward the union, it is
hard
to imagine that the university expects that it will
be
able to recruit strong new faculty--new faculty who increasingly
will
have the option of taking up positions at any number of universities,
including
positions at some that genuinely value the labour of all of
those
engaged in the fundamental work of the university as teachers,
instructors
and researchers.
President
Marsden, I urge you to bargain in good faith with the members of
CUPE
3903 and to sign a collective agreement that compensates them fairly
for
the work they do. If you want to make York a better university, this
is
the way to do it.
Professor
Imre Szeman
Department
of English/Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition
McMaster
University
Winner
of the John C. Polanyi Prize for Literature, 2000
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Imre
Szeman
Assistant
Professor
Department
of English/Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition
McMaster
University
1280
Main St. W., CNH-321
Hamilton,
Ontario L8S 4L9
Canada
Office:
(905) 525-9140 x 23725 Fax: (905)
777-8316
Home: (905) 540-3741
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