Cowbells
This seems to be the year for Halifax universities and their academic employees to thrash out the next few years’ contracts. This is complicated by the fact that we have three main universities, each with two faculty unions, one representing full-time faculty and one, part-time faculty. Things began to heat up in mid-August, the Dalhousie administration locked out their full-time faculty. The faculty, as expected, took to the picket line (my own union at Saint Mary’s sent support) and the clang of the cowbell was heard in the land. Perhaps the Dal administration expected a rapid surrender. It didn’t happen: the lockout dragged on until mid-September, cutting into the beginning of term. Eventually a settlement was reached.
Perhaps as a result of that, Dalhousie seems not to have wanted to risk a second strike, in the same term, by their part-time instructors. Reports are that that settlement was generally satisfactory. Part-time faculty at all three universities are in different locals of the same union, CUPE, and negotiations have been approximately simultaneous. One might have hoped that the Dalhousie part-time settlement would have precipitated similar agreements at the other two universities—but it didn’t. Negotiations broke down in both cases, and right now my part-time colleagues, as well as their counterparts at Mount Saint Vincent, are on strike. « More cowbell. »
All three universities rely heavily on our part-time instructors, to keep a realistic (if less than ideal) balance between teaching and research. Scores of courses are being disrupted here, hopefully not for too long. My union (SMUFU) is negotiating now… we may be next. I hope we can get a good contract without invoking the strike option: we’re one of the oldest faculty unions in Canada, and we’ve managed to work things out every time so far. Maybe we can do it again, or maybe the provincial government’s pressure on the universities has changed the environment to the point where we can’t. And if we can’t?
Picket lines are strange places, when you think about it, and university picket lines even more so. The atmosphere is an odd mixture of carnival, coffee break, and historical re-enactment, looking back to darker days of labour history. It demonstrates, in nothing else, a willingness to press back. There’s surely a more scientific system, but until it’s available, we’ll make do with what we have. Negotiation, followed, if necessary, by cowbells… unless of course somebody finds a good source of vuvuzelas.
