A Counting School - Hardcore Chartered Accountancy

I feel bad for the undergrads at York University: the strike continues

Since November 6, most undergraduate students at Toronto's York University have been suffering from a strike that has shut down the university. CUPE, the union involved, represents both Teaching Assistants (read: horribly underpaid grad students) and part-time professors. Presumably if no professors were in this union the university could have just kept on going without its TAs.

As the photo above suggests, I didn't go to York for my undergrad - but all Ontario CA students spend the month of June there at the School of Accountancy, where this photo was taken. It's a mix of small seminar-sized courses with 30 people or less, and a few larger lectures where SOA-wide announcements are made to all - generally right before or after the practice tests.

For CA students, I'm curious to know what effect this strike will have.on the SOA - will it still be at York University this year? Or if classes resume and get pushed back into the summer, will the venue of that august institution get shifted to another university that will actually be in summer mode - with presumably more empty classrooms?

I'm sure the staff responsible for booking facilities at Ryerson and the University of Toronto are salivating at the prospect of a lucrative new June source of income.

I would be a good little reporter and actually ask the ICAO to declare what their plan is, but without a resolution to the strike in place, I'm guessing the above theory is as good as any and no firm plans have been made until things simmer down.

Status of the strike itself: selected comments

I've learned to avoid reading the often silly and inflammatory comments on the Star's website when I want to avoid watching petty grudge matches, but the articles on the strike are worth checking out. You get to see the union mentality and that of people fed up with these strikes.

1. "With all due respect, you do not know what you are talking about. First, the economic times (to which you constantly appeal) have nothing to do with the current negotiations. Income derived from tuition last year rose from $316 million to $332 million at York and the York Foundation Fund is estimated at $160 million. Everyone knows that revenue from student enrolment is inversely related to economic decline."

2. "Every time I turn around either government or some union is trying to pick my pocket....unions get pay raises because they are good at exacting RANSOMS.....they DO NOT get raises because they deserve them...most union members would be unemployed, under-employed or on welfare if they had to make it in the REAL WORLD....DOWN WITH UNIONS!!!!"

Good times. Oh wait, here's another good comment.

3. York University is a parking authority and money making machine that happens to grant degrees as a lucrative sideline. Teaching assistants are terminated at the end of each year and then have to re-apply for their jobs, often not hearing the results until the last minute. The strike is about job security and a degree of fairness. The type of degree that York doesn't care about.

I sympathize with the plight of a TA to the extent that I would never want to be in their position - trying to support myself on their pay alone. "dodgingwrenches" wrote on the Star's site that five years ago a grad student earned $31 an hour - that's excellent pay, but I imagine the caveat is that they didn't work many hours, leading to their low total income.

And it's true - being located at the extreme fringe of Toronto's city limits, if you don't have a car the commute to the campus is killer - as a result the parking authority jab is well justified. These suggestions are fun to read and poke for fun - here comes a truly brilliant suggestion from a University of Windsor alumnus.

4. If York U students wish to get this settled they should take action. At UofW in '96 we had a strike that became violent. The student body however advised all the students to stop taking sides. We the students stormed a senate meeting with about 100 of us, showing them a list of over 3k students noting we would form a barrier around them the next time and that they would have to cross OUR picket line. We were basically saying once they got into a meeting in order to leave they would have to have a solution or else cross our picket line. We planned on doing that at the union office the next day however the plan worked as a day later the strike was solved. Obviously it was not the only deciding factor in the end of the strike however all strikes are eventually resolved so figure out what that resolution is now, not in 6 more months. The 3k student list was not a bluff either as with the university on strike, dorm students especially did not have much of anything to do.

A quick and lazy search for articles about the strike didn't turn up any support, but if that's true, it's hilarious.

5.  I just want the money back that I paid York in September. I believe that I'm going to have to drop some courses now, which means that I'll loose all the money I paid.

I hope that wasn't written by an English major. The following, on the other hand, was clearly written by someone who is a romantic idealist - and would be smacked silly with a sack of doorknobs if they tried to say it in a room full of angry students missing out on their education:

6. Ms Blondin says: "I can think of no other service where you would pay up front and then not get the service you paid for." And there is the heart of the matter: parents, students, and the university administration have degraded learning into little more than a service for money -- like buying sausages or real estate -- and this crippled vision of learning leaves us with factory style universities where learning takes a back seat. What these parents and students fail to understand is that learning can change your life, if done well by dedicated teachers. That dedication demands fair treatment, which the striking members at York are not getting from either the administration, or, it would appear, from far too many parents and teachers. The future looks grim indeed, if this is the vision of learning these parents and students hold in so high regard.

There's more than one person who calls it the "York University Corporation", as if calling it "corporate" means the administratin is "evil" and they're "fighting the man." Good luck with that angle.

7. Once teaching was a vocation, then gradually it was infested with parasites! 

Ouch, that's a little more harsh than what I was thinking.

8. York probably has the highest number of strikes among all universities in North America in recent years. The overall academic standard of this university is also not impressive. Why would I want my kids go to York?

The more I read about this sad state of affairs, the more this sounds like the PTA Disbands, the classic Simpsons episode. Bashing the academic integrity of the institution (I think the exhaust leak is linked to the low test scores), and otherwise just giving the university a bad name - it sounds more and more like Springfield Elementary.

Homer: Lousy teachers, trying to palm off our kids on us!
Lisa: But, Dad, by striking, they're trying to effect a change in
       management so that they can be happier and more productive.
Homer: Lisa, if you don't like your job, you don't strike: you just go
       in every day and do it really half-assed.  That's the American
       way.

Students at York's own Osgoode law school have a stronger administration looking out for their interests, which didn't 'palm off' the students on their parents: they went back to school halfway into the strike. The MBA program, naturally, is also unaffected. Big money brings better service.

When will the rest of the university recover? And are we setting ourselves up for a world of hurt in 2010?