Document Type
Article
Abstract
[First paragraph]
The third-largest university in Canada, York University owes its fame to a long history of labor disputes. Historically, the neoliberal rhetoric and goals of York’s intransigent administration have always clashed with a radical body of graduate students and faculty, who not only deemed it politically and ethically necessary to challenge the employer and reclaim their rights, but also considered it a question of survival. Certified as a union since the mid-Seventies, York’s contract faculty and teaching assistants (then joined in 2001 by graduate assistants) [1] have been periodically engaged against the institution’s trend towards the progressive déclassement [2] of their qualifications and professional expertise, and the casualization of academic jobs (Vercellone 2009, p. 123). A great deal of tenacity and a fast increasing union membership helped them endure often lengthy and sometimes disastrous strikes. Despite mixed results, their union, known today as CUPE Local 3903, neither succumbed to fatigue and loss—using losses and victories equally to its own advantage to improve its members’ salary and benefit package—nor did it morph into a stiff bureaucratic machine and managing its internal conflicts openly and as creatively as possible—refusing to comply to an organizational structure forever frozen into a set of default rules.
Repository Citation
Buiani, Roberta. "Creative Tactics and Union Politics. Learning from the York University Strike." Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture vol. 10, no. 3, 2010, pp. 1–18. https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/reconstruction/vol10/iss3/21