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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."