Fellow CASLLrs --
This is an excerpt from the message sent out by the U of T Faculty
Association yesterday. Its account of the York strike is gloomy. I'm
posting it to offer sympathy and support to our York colleagues.
Margaret Procter
University of Toronto
> From [log in to unmask] Tue Apr 8 15:58:14 1997
> Subject: Strike at York University
> Date: Tue, 8 Apr 1997 15:57:28 -0400
> TO: Members of UTFA Council
> FROM: Bill Graham, President
>
>Faculty and Librarians at York University have now been on strike for fourteen
>working days (Monday to Friday). Ministry of Labour mediation efforts failed,
>and private meditor Kevin Burkett was appointed by the parties for two days of
>intensive mediation to try to end the strike. Talks broke off last night
>shortly before midnight with no resolution. Burkett will stay in touch
>with the parties.
>
>Don Savage, Executive Director of CAUT, who observed the mediation, reports that
>"throughout these two days, the administration made not one single offer while
>YUFA indicated it was prepared to be flexible in the key areas of retirement
>(where the administration had stripped the contract and imposed its own
>article) and of compensation. The administration simply said that they had
>reached their mandate before the mediation started and had no intention of
>changing it. Why then had they called in the mediator? A reasonable person
>would conclude that they had intended this procedure to fail from the
>beginning in the expectation that the morale of the picket lines would be
>negatively affected by the failure of the mediation."
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