Nov 19, 2008
Written by By Andrew Fletcher, Sports/Health Editor (Excalibur Online)
Wednesday, 19 November 2008
Students mobilize to implore both parties to come to an agreement
What started with a Facebook group created to express student frustration with the strike turned into a large rally at Vari Hall where students demanded a solution. Approximately 200 students attended the Nov. 17 rally. Labelled ?Student Rally for a Solution,? it was a forum for students to express their grievances with the strike. The ongoing labour dispute has locked students out of classes for two weeks. Many York students at the rally said that they were made hostages by CUPE 3903, which represents York?s teaching assistants (TAs), graduate assistants (GAs) and contract faculty.
They criticized how both the York administration and CUPE 3903 hadn?t reached an agreement as of yet. ?I am completely overwhelmed by the great turnout we have here,? said head organizer Lyndon Koopmans. York administration suggested that both sides agree to binding arbitration. Binding arbitration is used when two parties cannot agree to a contract and a third-party is brought in to reach a compromise between the two sides. The rally?s slogan, ?Arbitration, Not a Hostage Situation,? heavily promoted that idea. CUPE 3903 said it doesn?t want to agree to binding arbitration because it takes power out of their hands. Graham Potts, head negotiator for CUPE 3903, attended the rally and expressed to Excalibur his disappointment with what he saw. ?There are a bunch of scared and confused students here today, and they don?t exactly understand what binding arbitration is,? he said. ?Binding arbitration should be used when there are one or two sticky issues still to be resolved between two parties in a labour dispute, and this is not the case right now.? Koopmans used Facebook to promote the rally via the Facebook group ?York University Anti-Strike Group,? as well as the website yorknothostage.com.
Many students wanted to bring the rally to the picket lines, but Koopmans was quick to discourage this. ?We released a statement saying that we would not interfere with the picket lines so that CUPE would not interrupt our rally,? he said. Students also criticized the York Federation of Students (YFS) for supporting the graduate students, who they said are supposed to represent the undergraduate students instead of CUPE 3903. ?The [YFS] are constantly complaining and protesting about high fees yet on the other [hand] they advocate supporting all the TA unions demands which will in turn lead to [ . . . ] higher fees,? reads a message posted by York student Harrison Bland on the ?Screw YFS? Facebook group.
Since the beginning of the strike, members of the YFS have walked the picket lines alongside CUPE.
YFS president Hamid Osman didn?t attend the rally. ?Jeremy [Salter, YFS executive director,] was speaking with Catherine Divaris, and she basically said that Hamid Osman is not welcome at the rally,? Osman said. ?At the same time, I have been receiving threatening emails, so I thought it would be unsafe for me to come? he added. Event organizer Divaris denied that she retracted Osman?s invitation.
?We didn?t tell Jeremy to uninvite [Osman],? she said. ?Jeremy told me that Hamid is not coming because he received death threats from our group, which is a complete lie.?
The organizers of the rally also gathered signatures to present to Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty. ?Just today we?ve had over 500 signatures,? said Koopmans. ?We?ve already had over 1000 to present to the premier.? Peter Shurman, Thornhill?s Conservative MPP, came out to the rally to offer his support. ?We want students in university to go back to school immediately,? he noted. ?We?ve gone through a decisive strike strike seven years ago and we don?t need to see it again.? Shurman later addressed the York situation during question period at Queen?s Park and handed them the signatures. A second rally also took place on Nov. 17 as CUPE 3903 supporters marched alongside the union at York?s main entrance at the corner of Keele Street and York Boulevard.
Several York undergraduate students, along with students from Ryerson University and the University of Toronto, came to give moral support to the strikers. ?We have had several undergraduate students on the picket lines, and we have had them since day one,? Potts said. The strike started on Nov. 6 after several months of failed negotiations and left many students locked out of classes. CUPE 3903 currently demands an 11 percent increase in wages over the next two years, along with job security for their members. York administration agreed to give CUPE 3903 members a nine percent increase in wages over three years, which the union rejected. The last time that the two sides met at the bargaining table was on Nov. 13. Both sides failed to reach an agreement.