York University has not yet restored the bulk of its classes — except for law students — after hundreds of professors and thousands of students said they would not cross picket lines of teaching assistants, who are still on strike.
The university senate said Thursday it will meet again Monday to decide how more classes it will resume, now that its contract faculty have agreed to a tentative deal. However, the senate decided that all classes in the graduate JD program offered by Osgoode Hall Law School could definitely resume Monday without replacing strikers.
The campus has become fiercely divided, with 2,700 teaching assistants still on strike. Hundreds of full-time York professors and thousands of students urged the university Thursday not to restore classes Monday — despite the deal reached with contract professors — because they don’t want to cross the picket lines of teaching and graduate assistants who are still on strike.
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An open letter from more than 300 faculty members, a petition from 4,500 undergrads and letters from individual faculties were presented Thursday afternoon to members of York’s senate executive committee before it met to plan the return of classes that were cancelled March 2.
The Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) 3903 represents about 1,000 contract faculty, who agreed to a tentative deal earlier this week, as well as 2,700 teaching and graduate assistants, who rejected York’s latest offer and remain on strike. Classes resumed Wednesday in nursing, engineering, business, human resource management and administrative studies, and York had said it would try to restore all classes Monday.
Social work student Daniel Enright, 37, said “after much soul-searching, I have decided not to cross the picket line, physically or online. These grad students are on the line defending indexation of tuition for future students . . . I don’t want to forfeit my year, but I’m very depressed at how the school has divided the student body and the faculty.”
The open letter from faculty stated: “We oppose resuming classes while CUPE is on strike and insist that the university administration focuses on a constructive settlement with the union.”
Professor Jody Berland, senior faculty associate in York’s Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies, said she believes if classes resume, it will remove the incentive for the university to reach a deal with the teaching assistants, adding “I believe the university is behaving egregiously.”
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York does guarantee students that during a strike, if they do not wish to cross a picket line, they will receive “immunity from penalty, reasonable alternative access to materials covered in our absence, reasonable extensions of deadlines and . . . other remedies.”
Berland said that would force professors to teach courses twice — once for students who do cross the picket lines, and again for those who did not.
Correction – March 13, 2015:This article was edited from a previous version that referred to the JD program offered by Osgoode Hall Law School as an undergraduate program.
