Jan 21, 2009
ANDREW WALLACE/TORONTO STAR
Premier Dalton McGuinty has ordered the province's top labour mediator to "bang some heads" to end the 11-week strike at York University.
But McGuinty this morning refused to set a deadline for mediator Reg Pearson to resolve the impasse.
"If I say you've got a week to get this done, both sides will say, fine we're going to sit out for a week," the premier told reporters before a cabinet meeting.
He said he has no intention of recalling the Legislature one month early to end the strike.
Liberal government sources say McGuinty does not want to do so because the province fears CUPE will be able to challenge the back-to-work legislation in court, dragging on the dispute.
Progressive Conservative MPP Peter Shurman (Thornhill) urged McGuinty to recall the House because the students' year is at risk.
Union spokesperson Tyler Shipley applauded the province's decision, and said he hopes the added pressure will bring York back to the bargaining table.
"We're ready to bargain at any time," Shipley said this morning. "The sooner, the better." York President Mamdouh Shoukri said in a statement last night the university has "no intention of negotiating for the sake of appearance," and would not return to the bargaining table unless the union reconsidered its demands.
News of the premier's intervention did little to reassure the 50,000 or so undergraduate students whose school year has been compromised by the 11-week dispute.
"Switching mediators doesn't help if both sides aren't willing to negotiate in good faith," said Hamid Osman, president and spokesperson for the York Federation of Students. Osman, a fourth-year political science student, was set to graduate in April; now his future, like that of his peers, is uncertain.
After last night's vote, the federation launched a petition demanding York refund at least 12 percent of student's tuition fees, Osman said. By noon today, hundreds of students had pledged to sign it, he said.
The strike was upheld last night after 63 per cent of the Canadian Union of Public Employees 3903 members rejected the school's latest offer in a forced vote requested by the university.
Shipley said the union would "wait as long as it takes. This strike has gone on two-and-a-half months -- this is no time for the university to be playing games."
The university could not be reached for comment this morning.
Sixty-nine per cent of union members turned out for the two-day vote, which was requested by the university and conducted by the Ontario Ministry of Labour.
The offer was rejected by 61 per cent of teaching assistants, as well as 59.3 per cent of contract faculty and 70 per cent of graduate assistants.