Ah, web 2.0, is there nothing you can't make better, or at least more entertaining?

December 18, 2008 10:36 PM

York University is no stranger to strikes (even breaking its own length record), and the latest is shaping up much like the previous - TA & Lecturers' union on the picket line, admin in the ugly concrete buildings, and undergrads looking cold and confused all around (YT). But since the last strike in 2001, a few things have changed. No, not the issues (same as always - living wages for TAs, job security for lecturers) or the effect (disruption of undergrad education) - but last time there were few discussion forums, no facebook groups or videos by the local newspaper, and definitely no (somewhat obvious, but still mildly entertaining) Apple ad parodies.

Actually, they have some pretty good teaching there - but from this view of the campus (mentally add snow and slush for the school year), you can see why the university homepage has so few images. (I'm cheating - the building this view is from is quite pretty. Shame it's the only one :)

posted by jb (15 comments total)

I TA there and while I appreciate some of the systemic problems involved with contract faculty (Unit 2), the TAs actually have it pretty good, imo.

I'm just glad that I'm able to still do my research there on a daily basis.
posted by spacediver at 10:56 PM on December 18, 2008

I'm a York student. When I saw yesterday's post on the sit-in at The New School, I thought: "that's nice, but if I put up a FPP on my university's strike, I can't imagine why anyone else would care." Maybe I was wrong...
posted by Clandestine Outlawry at 10:58 PM on December 18, 2008

Friends don't let friends go to York -- and, apparently, neither does the staff.

(Oh, and CUPE is a filthy, bloated leech that likes to spend time, money, and effort on irrelevant crap like boycotting foreign nations while cheerfully screwing its own.)
posted by Krrrlson at 12:09 AM on December 19, 2008

I should disclose and say that I'm a former York undergrad - I was there for the 2000-2001 strike (the record holding one).

Also, that I have a like-hate relationship with the campus. I like Vari hall, hate everything else. Though I miss the indoor common space - my current uni has a lot less, and very little that isn't locked up at night. Whereas even at 2am, there were places out of the cold to read and study at York. Dreary places, but roofed.

Being at another university has really made me appreciate something else about York - they are - or at least were when I was there - serious about teaching quality. There is a lot of thought put into the curriculum, and more training for teaching assistants. I was really glad I went there - despite the strike in 3rd year - because I don't know how I would have done elsewhere.
posted by jb at 12:10 AM on December 19, 2008

Strikes by TAs are strange and dangerous creatures insofar as their bones of contention are usually quite valid, and yet their strikes have the potential to inflict a world of hurt on a vast array of people who aren't directly involved. When TA's go out, so very many people get screwed; the collateral damage is enormous.
posted by bicyclefish at 12:36 AM on December 19, 2008

This isn't only a strike by TA's. The union also comprises contract faculty members who teach on a non-permanent basis.

In a sense there's a hidden conflict at play here - contract faculty want easy access to tenure positions, which in turn will clog up positions that current grad students would want in the future.
posted by spacediver at 3:00 AM on December 19, 2008

I found the results of this search quite interesting, especially once you hit the first result.
posted by gman at 4:08 AM on December 19, 2008

Strikes by TAs are strange and dangerous creatures insofar as their bones of contention are usually quite valid, and yet their strikes have the potential to inflict a world of hurt on a vast array of people who aren't directly involved. When TA's go out, so very many people get screwed; the collateral damage is enormous.

Wouldn't be much of a strike otherwise.
posted by atrazine at 5:45 AM on December 19, 2008

I should disclose and say that I'm a former York undergrad — I was there for the 2000-2001 strike (the record holding one).

I remember two strikes while I was there — one for the professors and one for the TAs. (I think the 2000-2001 strike was the latter one.) One of my professors walked into the classroom after his strike was over with the words, "As I was saying when I was interrupted..."

He said (of course he may have been biased) that the school administration was very hardline about the strike. The teachers would have gone to arbitration after the first two weeks, but York wouldn't agree to it. So the teachers held out for six or eight weeks (memory fuzzy) until they had to give in because they couldn't live on strike pay any longer (it's 50% of actual salary). Meanwhile the students were hanging around, running out of money to live on and being held up in terms of graduation or being able to take a summer job.

I'm inclined to think there wouldn't be so many strikes if the administration was better at resolving staff grievances.
posted by orange swan at 6:55 AM on December 19, 2008

My wife was a TA/grad student at York during the 2000-2001 strike, and while she enjoyed her program she couldn't get over how dysfunctional the campus culture was. Between the strike, the constant disputes between Israeli and Palestinian student groups and the utterly antisocial atmosphere of the campus (hardly anyone lives there and it's out in the middle of nowhere, so most people come in for class and then leave), it wasn't the happiest place to be.
posted by The Card Cheat at 8:19 AM on December 19, 2008

Let's face it - the strikes go on because the parties involved have nothing left to lose. They already work at York.

[TOTALLY YORKIST]
posted by GuyZero at 8:58 AM on December 19, 2008

Honestly, if you were going to come up with a big-biz-inspired cariacture of the "evil selfish labour union," it would end up looking like the York TA union.

Now, to be fair, York admin are a bunch of assholes as well. But it takes two to really fuck shit up.

Over the course of their strike, the TA union has:

- demanded a sixty per cent pay increase in the first year following and simultaneously claimed that the strike "isn't about money" (they've variously claimed the primary reason for the strike is either cost-of-living pay increases or contract faculty being used as a way for the school to deny tenure, depending on what week it is. Note that the contract faculty portion of the union largely voted against the strike)

- called York's decision to allow foreign students graduating in the winter term - you know, the people who have spent tens of thousands of dollars per semester in order to study at York, usually for specialized programs not offered in their home countries, and who typically come from poor countries to boot - to finish their degrees "unconscionable"

- set up multiple media interviews wherein members of the union explain that working ten hours a week is "just too hard"

- refused arbitration offers

- interrupted classes at Osgoode Hall Law School and Schulich Business School, neither of which are obligated to heed the strike (and, one would mention, Osgoode did honor the strike for over a month before any further delays in term would cause serious harm to its students' professional opportunities, and has made every reasonable effort to offer remedy for students choosing to honor the strike) to "explain" how students should honor the strike - note that this was illegal on their part

- and just generally been assy in their tone when dealing with the university, pointedly saying "yeah, we'll look this over and get back to you in a week" to multiple offers from the school.

I'm all for organized labour. I'm all for the right to strike. But I've never been a fan of solidarity, precisely because the principle requires labour supporters to view other strikes with an uncritical eye, and this is a stupid strike. York might be a bit more severe than other schools with regard to TA pay, but they have the same root problem everybody else does - the government underfunds secondary education. And the TA union, amidst all their complaints, has forgotten that they're mostly a union of fairly privileged people with part-time jobs, who are working to better their lot in life via an advanced degree and that a little bit of discomfort is simply expected. (The exception: contract faculty, most of whom are teaching as a second part-time job.)

This strike has poisoned pro-labour sentiment for a generation of York students (and York is a big school), and part of the reason for the strike is that York TAs want a new contract that will expire at the same time as every other TA union's contract so that the TA unions can strike en masse in a few years' time, and that will just make things worse.

The union lost this strike. Period. No ifs, ands or buts. They lost after two weeks and they just keep digging.
posted by mightygodking at 10:53 AM on December 19, 2008 [2 favorites]

My husband articulated something in a very clear way -

I wonder if a lot of these problems are because one model - organized industrial labour - is being taken into a very different context: academic education. Faculty aren't really management (they are actually unionized at York, but elsewhere are called management), and students are definitely not customers.

And the issues at the heart of the matter aren't something like simple hourly pay. TAs at York have excellent hourly pay - though I imagine that the necessary teaching hours are underestimated (whereas TA hours are bit overestimated where I am).

Really, the problem is that the universities are using part-time teaching to fund graduate programs - and this isn't enough to live on. This matters, because PhD programs are too long - and pay too precarious at the end - to treat them like Law or Medicine or even a BA. And yes, I know the whole argument "don't go in if you can't afford", which is one of the reasons why I am NOT TAing at York but went somewhere with more scholarship. But Canada, as a society, wants and needs university teachers and researchers - or there would be no part-time teaching to underfund those PhDs with.

As for contract lecturing - that's another problem. It's again a lazyness - the university system (because it is all universities in North America) can so conveniently fill in their little gaps without employing someone full time or with any security. The pay at York is actually quite decent compared to the shocking rates in the US (due in a large part to union activity), but you can't get any security (in terms of getting a full course load or in teaching steadily). Some contract people are professionals with other work - the Creative Writing department at York hires novelists, for example. But a lot more are academics stringing together courses at York and UofT (which also paid shockingly little a while ago, don't know now) and maybe Waterloo, all while trying to research and write so they can get a full-time job.
posted by jb at 11:55 AM on December 19, 2008

Yeah, so I understand a lot of the complaints. But the problem is that they aren't about the contract - they are really about the very structure of the university system as it has emerged in the last 30 years. I don't think this is a healthy system for anyone - full faculty, part-time teachers or students.

I think the solutions are not simply to hire more faculty. We need more - and I think they should be taking discussion sections and marking more, which would improve quality of teaching (I'm a TA, and I can tell you that it really isn't the same having my comments vs the expert lecturer's). And be more chary about using contract faculty to fill gaps - they should be filling maternity leave, etc, not permanent department holes, and even then should be brought on for a full teaching load and thus decent pay. PhD students should either be funded, or not accepted - not strung along for years, and not used as cheap teaching or cheap research. (I prefer a scholarship/fellowship model to a labour model - because I think that is more appropriate to the nature of the degree.)

I also think universities should look into more full-time teachers - not faculty, not frustrated researchers, but people who have chosen to concentrate on teaching at a high level. They can be paid more like secondary teachers, and have different academic expectations (maybe don't need a PhD). But would have job security, and can teach a variety of things - esp beginner languages.

---------------------------

on a completely different side of the problem re strikes:

the other structural problem is that universities - like public transit systems - are not businesses. When strikes disrupt their service, the "customers" cannot simply go and buy from another factory. They are students and passengers - who are trapped. And there is little to no incentive for employers to negotiate in good faith.
posted by jb at 12:11 PM on December 19, 2008

jb: I also think universities should look into more full-time teachers - not faculty, not frustrated researchers, but people who have chosen to concentrate on teaching at a high level. They can be paid more like secondary teachers, and have different academic expectations (maybe don't need a PhD). But would have job security, and can teach a variety of things - esp beginner languages.

That model is used quite a bit in Montreal -- my Mechanics 101 lecturer was a full-type teacher who'd been at the school essentially forever (he was 69 when I took the course).
posted by Monday, stony Monday at 9:28 PM on December 20, 2008