Thursday, August 22
Last night, McGill Provost Christopher Manfredi and Vice-President Fabrice Labeau unlawfully contacted our members to try to influence them at a critical moment of collective bargaining, violating McGill’s principles of integrity and responsibility. Through a selective history and significant omissions, these senior leaders attempted to justify their reneging on their unequivocal undertaking to meet and negotiate with us on August 19, 21, 29, and September 4, 2024.
Provost Manfredi and Vice-President Labeau are engaging in these tactics to destroy our union. They have resorted to countless manoeuvres to achieve this goal. They opposed our certification and lost. They are now seeking judicial review – an appeal-like process – to overturn that decision and decertify us. They are pulling out all the stops, and spending hundreds of thousands of student, taxpayer, and donor dollars to eliminate us and our sister faculty unions. If the Provost and Vice-President were serious about creating a stable and strong McGill community, they would immediately end the judicial review and recognize our sister faculty unions.
McGill offered a series of excuses for reneging on our most recent bargaining dates. But our members know that we suspended our strike in June on the basis of the University’s undertaking to meet with us. We made this clear in our statements and social media. For example, we ended our announcement of the strike suspension with the following:
We expect McGill to return to the bargaining table in late August/early September on the four dates to which we have already agreed. Our membership has reached a consensus to resume the strike if and as necessary, at a time of our choosing, to achieve a collective agreement.
There is no ambiguity in this statement regarding the importance of McGill meeting its undertaking to meet with us on the agreed-upon dates. To imply otherwise, as Provost Manfredi and Vice-President Labeau did in their attempt to influence our members, is deeply disingenuous.
