Part-time workers at York University have called a strike, leaving thousands and thousands of students in a state of flux and anxiety. In an effort to sympathize with the students, many have lashed out at the teaching assistants, the contract faculty members; the ones that walked out on the students on November 6.The strikers are calling for better job security, wages, benefits and classroom context and when they rejected a binding arbitration, I started hearing students call the union members “greedy” and “selfish.” It irks me to hear this because aren’t some of the strikers recent graduates, or even students themselves trying to pay for their education and loans?
Students need to understand that the current CUPE 3903 struggle is also their own struggle. If the Ontario government is under funding universities and colleges so much that they can’t even pay their workers an appropriate wage, then imagine the other arenas that will have to fall short: class sizes will swell, tuition will rise, the quality of education will plunge, and we’ll become more reliant on corporations.
On Nov. 17 at noontime, there will be a Solidarity Rally with the workers of CUPE 3903 to unite students and York staff. Hopefully, students will show up to support the strikers, instead of rallying against them.
Photo: Anastasia Mandziuk
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