On Jan 9, York University appealed to the Ministry of Labour to bring its latest offer directly to the union membership for ratification. The vote took place on Monday and Tuesday of this week. Ten days after the administration walked away from the bargaining table, the results are in: Workers have voted to reject the offer. Is this a surprise? Not really.
At a General Membership Meeting on Jan 8 the very same offer was discussed. The 600 workers present at the meeting voted overwhelmingly (85%) not to send the offer to ratification, but instead to send the bargaining team back to the table with a strong mandate to continue negotiations. Why would York appeal to the Ministry of Labour on an offer that was sure to fail? “This result is not a surprise. We told York’s administration that they were wasting everyone’s time by forcing us to vote on an inadequate offer, but they insisted on putting us through this expensive and time-consuming process,” said Tyler Shipley, spokesperson for the union. The current offer (almost identical to the one rejected on Nov 6 when the strike began) does not adequately address job security, graduate funding, health benefits or back to work protocol.
The administration at York has wasted over another week of what could have been productive bargaining at the table. This has been their tactic since negotiations began and throughout the strike. Delay and hope that the workers will become demoralized under the pressure of public opinion; delay and hope they will succumb to financial hardship; delay and hope the membership will cave to a bad deal. In fact, York only came to the table seven days out of the first 70 days of the strike! Like bargaining with a brick wall, York’s typical response to the workers’ demands has been: “Not inclined.”
On Monday and Tuesday the workers demonstrated their resolve, but Dr. Mamdouh Shoukri, president of York University, remains recalcitrant: “This is our offer for settlement. Now it is up to the Union and its members to reconsider their demands and step back from the brink.” Premier Dalton McGuinty is now calling in a mediator to “bang heads together” to reach a settlement (as he so gracefully put it this morning).
The defeat of the anti-union and anti-democratic forced ratification vote was a victory for the workers at York and for the struggle for good-quality and well-funded education in Canada. But the struggle is not over. Now workers may have to face back-to-work legislation; and it appears as though Mr. McGuinty may be posturing to go that route. If this happens, the struggle will be immediately translated into a political struggle for the right to strike. Workers will have to organize to spread the struggle to other workers, unionized and non-unionized, and to hold firm at the picket lines.
