MONTREAL, August 14, 2024 – The Association of McGill Professors of Law (AMPL) was at the Québec Superior Court yesterday to ask a judge to overturn a ministerial order that would limit AMPL’s right to strike against McGill University. In so doing, AMPL stood up for the rights of all unions to exercise their constitutional right to strike. 

After a day of hearings, Judge Pascale Nolin withheld her decision, indicating that she would decide later, likely by the end of the week. 

McGill was forced to defend its attempts to limit the rights of its first faculty union during an ongoing labour dispute. The union was on strike for eight weeks earlier this year while McGill refused to meet for most of the summer.  McGill has asked that an arbitrator be appointed to impose a collective agreement on the parties but, in the meantime, McGill acknowledged that negotiations should continue as usual and that AMPL retains its right to strike. AMPL argued that McGill’s objective in seeking an arbitrator was to  undermine its right to strike and delay the conclusion of a collective agreement as long as possible.

“Despite public statements about progress, McGill spent student, taxpayer and donor money this summer to hire a downtown lawyer to ask Minister Boulet to force AMPL, against its will, into mandatory arbitration that limits its right to strike,” said Kirsten Anker, Vice-President of AMPL. “We opposed this, pointing to the significant progress that had been made. Our ability to resume our strike is the only reason McGill agreed to even meet with us this August.”

The Executive Committee of another McGill union, Association of Graduate Students Employed at McGill (AGSEM), that has itself suffered from McGill’s hostile attitude to unions, stated that:  “McGill’s request for arbitration is completely inappropriate, seeing as how they have not put sufficient effort into bargaining themselves.”

Quebec Minister of Labour, Jean Boulet, was also called  to defend his order of compulsory arbitration which implicitly limits AMPL’s right to strike. The Supreme Court of Canada has called the right to strike “an essential part of a meaningful collective bargaining process.”

“Minister Boulet’s actions are not only a threat to AMPL, but a threat to all Quebec unions,” said AMPL President Evan Fox-Decent. “The legislation that allows for mandatory arbitration was created to protect fledgling unions like ours from being pushed around by employers. Instead, the Minister’s decision gives Quebec employers yet another weapon to crush unions.”

Madeleine Pastinelli, President of the the Fédération québécoise des professeures et professeurs d’université (FQPPU), notes that a negotiated settlement is always preferable: “It is deplorable that McGill has resorted to requesting arbitration rather than taking the time to negotiate with its professors, especially given that it has shown itself to be so resistant and unresponsive to negotiation.”

David Sanders, a union organizer with the CSN-affiliated Toronto Hospitality Workers Union, commented: “Academic freedom and the right to strike are two fundamental building blocks of a free and democratic society. Unionized law faculty at McGill are standing up for both. With the challenges facing democratic societies today, I would think that McGill would take a broader view and celebrate the actions of their unionized faculty — not seek to strip them of their right to strike.”