Strike FAQ for Students

AMPL recommences its strike as of 26 August 2024

The Association of McGill Professors of Law (AMPL) is on strike as of Monday, August 26 2024 until such time as McGill agrees to drop its decertification proceedings against AMPL, resume bargaining on the handful of outstanding non-monetary issues, and put all previously agreed to components of a collective agreement in a collective agreement.

We deeply regret the disruption that the stoppage of work will cause, but unfortunately McGill has proven that it will not bargain in good faith unless McGill’s activities are impacted. This document explains the reasons for the strike and provides students with information relevant to them.

Reasons for Strike Action

The University’s pattern in collective bargaining has been to refuse to meet with our bargaining team frequently and regularly. When we do meet, McGill has arrived unprepared and proceeded at a snail’s pace. We paused our spring strike on June 20 because McGill agreed to four new bargaining sessions in late August and early September. Then, to our surprise, McGill cancelled those sessions at the last minute. The University is now seeking to decertify our union at a hearing in December, despite a resounding decision of the Tribunal du travail certifying our union. If their suit is successful, it will gravely impede the ongoing efforts of professors in other faculties—Arts and Education–to certify their associations. The University is also urging us to attend arbitration on matters that are most efficiently settled through good faith negotiation, such as how our Faculty is governed.

We know that McGill’s strategy is one of delay and denial. It wants to drag out reaching a collective agreement with us to try to kill our union through its decertification proceedings. McGill has done this before. For instance, it dragged out first contract negotiations with the course lecturers’ union (MCLIU) for three years in the hopes that MCLIU members would abandon their union. We continue to offer to work around the clock to reach a negotiated agreement on all outstanding matters save for monetary issues, and to settle monetary issues at expedited arbitration. The University continues to refuse.

We strive to teach you, our students and future colleagues, the importance of measured disagreement, fairness in judgment, and good faith in negotiations. We demand it from ourselves and from our peers. We demand it as well from the University.

As the first faculty union in the history of McGill, we know that any negotiated change that constrains the administration’s discretion paves the way for improvements in working conditions not just for us, but for the entire campus. We now use the one method at our disposal – the right to strike – to change the dynamics of the bargaining process. Our experienced advisers estimate that we could conclude the remaining issues in two or three days of good faith bargaining. McGill just needs to accept our right to exist and to come to the table.

The strike affects your education and puts in play the fall term. Unfortunately, we have learned that the only way to get the University to take our negotiation process seriously is through job action. What is at stake is the need to resolve basic working conditions, including a guarantee of a minimum number of law professors to maintain an adequate student-professor ratio. This matters now more than ever, as McGill has increased the incoming 1L class size by 15% without consultation and without additional professorial support. These conditions affect the quality of education at the Faculty. We strongly believe that the interests of students and professors are aligned.

Our working conditions are your learning conditions!

The State of Collective Bargaining

What are the issues behind AMPL’s bargaining position?

This is AMPL’s first collective agreement. After extensive consultation with all of its members, AMPL has prepared a comprehensive package containing thirty-three articles that lay out our monetary and non-monetary proposals.

Over nearly two years of negotiations, we have settled 18 of those articles, but crucial dimensions of the collective agreement remain unresolved:

Some of them pertain to faculty working conditions:

• appointments and reappointments (almost settled)
• promotions and tenure (almost settled)
• terms and conditions of employment
• duties and responsibilities of faculty members (almost settled)
• faculty research support
• working environment and administrative support
• leaves of absence (including sabbatical leaves) (almost settled)
• financial exigency/minimal cohort/limits on class sizes

Others pertain to the governance of the Faculty:

• the rights and privileges of the Association
• the term of the agreement
• the appointment and reappointment of the Dean
• academic governance

And of course, others pertain to monetary proposals:

• salaries
• employee benefits
• merit pay

For many of the issues pertaining to working conditions, AMPL’s approach has been to propose that the current McGill regulations be adopted, provided that the areas where the University now has unbridled discretion be curtailed, and that AMPL be consulted on future changes to the policies.

A central reason for having a collective agreement is to set down the rules governing the relationship between the parties and to keep those rules stable for the collective agreement’s duration. Yet we have not managed to get the University to acknowledge that during the collective agreement, the rules we agree upon cannot be unilaterally changed by the University and applied to our members without our consent. We have settled substantive issues around tenure, leaves, and appointments and reappointments, but continue to be stuck on the University’s insistence that it maintains the right to amend the terms of our collective agreement during the life of the agreement itself. We have offered an undertaking that the Association will accept reasonable amendments that do not prejudice our members and have offered to give the University expedited access to an arbitrator, for which the Association will pay if we are found to be unreasonable. We have even brought forward case law showing that the University’s position is inconsistent with the Labour Code. But the University remains dug in. This position makes us to wonder what changes to its University-wide regulations McGill has planned.

Labour law is clear: employers cannot maintain discretion to unilaterally change the terms of a collective agreement over its lifetime. The University refuses to accept this. The fact that we have to negotiate this basic issue—and that negotiations are in part stalled because of it—is a source of considerable frustration. It also signals to us that McGill is in denial about our right to exist and about its duty to bargain in good faith.

We want the University to come to the table in good faith to discuss our proposals and reach a collective agreement that is fair, equitable, and consistent with labour law.

WHO, WHAT, WHERE

1. Can professors work during the strike?

The point of our strike, like most strikes, is to withdraw labour collectively from the employer to encourage the employer to agree to reasonable terms at the bargaining table. The Québec Labour Code protects the integrity of the strike by generally prohibiting work during it. This strike is timed with the start of fall term to put pressure on the University by withholding our teaching and administrative labour. While on strike, professors may not deliver their courses, supervise term papers, review graduate student work, or participate in the many Faculty committees that make the Faculty run.

2. Can GAs and RAs work during the strike?

Insofar as active supervision of the professor is necessary for GAs and RAs to do their work, it will be interrupted during the strike. However, as long as the work is assigned to them prior to the strike, and can be carried out without the direct intervention of the professor, we think it is desirable for them to continue their work. To make sure RAs can continue to be paid, AMPL has arranged to have delegates approve RA timesheets on Workday. If an RA finds themselves in a crisis due to a significant delay in payment, AMPL would support them with short-term loans to be repaid once wages have been paid. Nevertheless, RAs are the University’s employees, and if there are pay or other workplace issues, we would expect the RA union AMURE to take the lead in addressing them.

3. I am a graduate student. Can I meet with my supervisor in person or virtually during the strike?

Professors should not carry out teaching duties, including the supervision of graduate students, during the strike.

4. What actions will take place during the strike? Will there be a picket line?

There will be rotating picket lines at the various entrances to the Faculty, although the hourly and daily frequency may change. There may be picket lines or protest activities elsewhere as well. We expect other impactful events, such as teach-ins and townhalls, to complement the picket. Solidarity picketers from across Canada and Québec will join us, including on every Friday that we are on strike. Students are very welcome to join us!

5. Should I cross AMPL’s picket line?

The point of our picket lines is to draw attention to our collective withdrawal of our labour from the University. We are not trying to block student access, and we leave it up to each student to decide whether and how to respond to and engage with our picket. We also leave it to students, in conjunction with the LSA and the GLSA, to develop any student-led positions that reflect the interests of students, as understood by students.

Students have shared with us already a wide range of activities they have undertaken to express support for our strike and improved learning conditions at McGill’s Faculty of Law. We reiterate that we are not soliciting students to carry out these or other activities, but many students have asked us to share with them ideas on these matters, and so we are sharing some that have come from students themselves. We defer always to your LSA and GLSA, and advise coordinating with them.

• Consider calling and emailing the Dean, President Saini, Provost Manfredi, and Deputy Provost Labeau. Ask what they have done to meet AMPL’s demands, urge them to get back to bargaining, and tell them how the strike is affecting you.
• Consider taking an hour to walk with your profs on the picket line before or after you visit the law school, Homemade signs, noise makers, music etc are all welcome.
• Consider attending an AMPL teach-in if one is scheduled on the day you visit. If you are coming on a Friday, welcome CAUT flying picketers from universities across Canada.
• Consider asking questions in class or at town halls about McGill’s position and why it is refusing to bargain, refusing to drop its decertification proceedings, and stalling the start of fall term.
• Consider wearing an AMPL sticker or button.
• Follow AMPL on social media and share posts.

We reiterate that LSA and GLSA are the proper associations to organize any collective actions students may wish to take. Student associations do have power and can create their own campaigns, and they can organize their own protests or actions that pressure McGill to get back to the table.

A strike is an important learning moment for all of us. AMPL will provide updates on its web page (ampl-ampd.ca), Twitter/X (@ampl_ampd), LinkedIn (add here), and Instagram (add here), and will continue to communicate directly with student associations.

6. I have not yet paid my tuition. What should I do?

Pursuant to McGill’s guidelines (https://www.mcgill.ca/student-accounts/awards-assistance/tuition-fees-payment-deferral), students who are eligible for McGill’s fee deferrals, including but not limited to those receiving Canadian or US student aid, and who wish to seek a fee deferral, should make sure they apply for a deferral before the upcoming eBill deadline on Friday August 30th if they wish to avoid being charged interest on any outstanding tuition and fee balances with McGill.

Students who are not eligible for fee deferrals and those delayed in paying tuition are invited to contact AMPL through our website or social media DMs to arrange assistance. AMPL will gladly cover any interest applied by McGill to late tuition payments for law students in this difficult and uncertain time.