MONTREAL, August 19, 2024 – The Association of McGill Professors of Law (AMPL) brought new proposals to settle its labour dispute with McGill University at a long-agreed upon negotiation, but McGill refused to attend. McGill’s lawyer, Corrado De Stefano, stated in a letter to AMPL’s lawyer that “neither we nor our client’s representatives will” attend the negotiations.
Today’s negotiation session had been agreed to by both McGill and AMPL in May and is a critical step toward negotiating a first collective agreement with McGill University. This is the third time that McGill has unilaterally cancelled a negotiation session at the last minute.
“We are committed to enhancing the quality of the law faculty through collaborative, good faith negotiations with the administration,” stated AMPL President, Evan Fox-Decent. “It is only through a fair bargaining process that we can attract and retain talented faculty, strengthen the institution’s reputation for academic excellence, and deepen the student experience,” he continued.
“McGill knows that the only way to avoid a strike that threatens this fall’s teaching semester is to come to the table with real proposals and to drop its attack on our very existence,” noted Kirsten Anker, AMPL’s Vice-President. “We aim to be partners with the McGill administration in building a strong, stable, and cohesive university that prioritizes research that enriches society and engages in teaching the next generation of leaders,” she added.
Despite AMPL’s willingness to negotiate, it is confronted with the fact that, rather than bargain over the summer, McGill administrators spent taxpayer, student, and donor funds in devising strategies to undermine collective bargaining at McGill. Not only is McGill challenging the existence of AMPL, but also of the other faculty unions at McGill: the Association of McGill Professors of Education and the Association of McGill Professors of the Faculty of Arts.
The Executive Committee of the Association of Graduate Students Employed at McGill (AGSEM) recalled that it had experienced anti-union conduct by McGill administrators who used “the Labour Code to retaliate against employee groups who have exercised their right to strike by suspending them from other positions at the university.”
Fox-Decent sees no alternative than to continue to push McGill to negotiate: “Despite McGill’s previous conduct and its failure to show up at an agreed negotiation session today, we have returned to the bargaining table in the sincere hope that McGill administrators will join us on Wednesday. This is the only way to avoid a strike that would disrupt the lives of hundreds of students and their families. It is the only way to build a better McGill because the data is clear that investing in the faculty contributes directly to higher student satisfaction, post-graduation success, and the law faculty’s reputation and rankings.”
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