MONTREAL, August 26, 2024 – On the very first day of the 2024-2025 academic year, McGill University today forced its law professors back on strike. After promising for over three months to meet with the Association of McGill Professors of Law (AMPL), McGill senior administrators reneged, refusing to engage in good-faith negotiations with its first faculty union.
The distance between the union’s and McGill’s bargaining positions is not major and could be addressed through a few days of solid negotiations. Nevertheless, McGill refuses to negotiate. Instead, McGill is seeking to decertify AMPL and is fighting off two other faculty unions, the Association of McGill Professors of Education, and the Association of McGill Professors of the Faculty of Arts.
McGill is following an anti-union strategy increasingly common among senior university administrators. “Senior administrators at McGill and elsewhere are playing by similar union-busting playbooks by ignoring faculty, ignoring students, and ignoring staff,” stated David Robinson, Executive Director of the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT), the umbrella association of Canadian university professors. “While McGill claims that it prizes ‘academic freedom, integrity, responsibility, equity, and inclusiveness,’ it is curtailing the freedom of its academics and acting irresponsibly toward its students” Robinson continued.
McGill is delaying settlement of a collective agreement in order to use its own refusal to bargain as a reason not to have a union. It has asked for binding arbitration but, while arbitration may be useful for salary disputes, it is not useful to protect faculty interests in designing and implementing McGill Law’s world class program. “Our issues have to do with whether faculty – the experts in their fields – should decide what an academic program should contain or administrators who are far away from teaching,” said Kirsten Anker, a McGill Law professor and Vice-President of AMPL.
Faculty unions across Quebec and Canada see themselves in AMPL’s fight for academic freedom, for a say in the university’s priorities, and to end the hemorrhaging of professors to other, higher paying, institutions abroad. As a result, these unions have mobilized themselves in unprecedented ways, both financially and morally.
“Given the support we have received, we have sufficient funds to remain on strike for the entire academic year,” stated Evan Fox-Decent, a professor at McGill Law and AMPL President. “Because of the burden that a prolonged strike will have on students, we hope we do not have to use those funds.”
“The lesson that McGill has pounded into us,” noted Richard Janda, a McGill Law professor and Secretary of AMPL, “is that unless we are prepared – against our training and desires – to put student education at risk, McGill will not respond. It is shameful that McGill is so cavalier with students’ wellbeing and education in direct contradiction to its claims of advancing education.”
Students are required by McGill to pay their school fees by August 30. “Many of us have moved from far away, left our jobs, and signed leases and are now being asked to pay school fees for a term that may not occur. It is shocking that McGill would choose not to attend negotiations, despite knowing how much students have invested, both professionally and financially, to be part of this institution,” stated Kate Pundyk, an incoming McGill law student relocating from England.
Background
AMPL was certified as the union representing McGill law professors in November 2022, and has since been negotiating to establish the first faculty collective agreement in the University’s history. The outstanding issues involve working conditions common in the academic community, including: the role of professors in the selection of the dean and new hires; the preservation of working conditions and professorial duties; decisions over program changes, student grades, and graduation; and modest salary adjustments to match inflation and salary conditions at other Canadian law faculties. Because McGill refused to bargain, AMPL went on strike for 8 weeks in late April, 2024 and then suspended the strike after McGill agreed to an additional four bargaining days on August 19, 21, 29 and September 4. McGill reneged on that promise, cancelling those sessions at the last minute because, it said, it had decided that negotiations were not worth the bother.
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