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I wanted to start with a timely piece: as of this morning, the union representing Teaching Assistants and Research Assistants at McMaster is on strike. As of yet, classes are still on, but many lectures and labs will be affected. Strikes are becoming commonplace in higher education – immediately last year’s strike at York comes to mind, which cancelled classes for three months and led exams into June. In 2008, the part-time academic faculty at Laurier were on strike for two weeks. The year before that, I helped coordinate a student sit-in at Brock University when a looming faculty strike was set to cancel December exams. In 2006, a province-wide college strike shut down classes for three weeks.
The key similarity in all of these situations, and most certainly for all future labour disputes, is that students are left powerless, and out of the bargaining boardrooms. Certainly there are a few upper-year students who may be members of a bargaining unit, but the majority of the undergraduate and college students in the province are completely at the mercy of the union and the institution. While both sides always claim to have the student interest at heart, how are students expected to cope with squeezed academic semesters, shortened summers, and uncertain timelines?
Students pay thousands of dollars each year for an education, not just for a grade. A strike may or may not cancel classes outright, but every single one harms interaction, learning methods, and the chance to pick the brains of other thought leaders in their field. The number I receive at the end of the course means much less to me than the time spent with professors, the learning skills taught by TAs, and the cumulative knowledge absorbed through the entire process. Every single strike harms that learning environment.
Students are a captive and powerless consumer. Once I have been accepted to my school, I’m paying for whatever comes out the other side. I pay the same amount to be taught by a full professor or a sessional lecturer. I pay the same amount in a 400-seat lecture hall in a class with 20 TAs as I do in a fifteen-person class. And I’ve already paid that money by the time “strike season” comes along. I don’t get the chance at a refund, the chance to switch to a new school (until the year is over), and most importantly, I don’t have any sway with the two groups that are holding my education hostage.
I don’t intend to take sides, administration vs. union. I judge every situation based on its own circumstances. But I disagree with the notion that students as consumers must be the losers in every labour dispute in the higher education system. We have the right to an education that begins and ends on schedule, with the promised interaction levels throughout, with no worry, uncertainty or threat of cancelled classes. With no ability to hop institutions, especially not mid-semester, one of the few ways to guarantee this right is through declaring education an essential service.
Essential service declaration would not mean that the bargaining process dies. What it would mean, however, is healthy discussion that does not use “the student interest” as a pawn in the media to gather sympathy for either side. It would mean that students carry out their studies in labour peace, and do not have the threat of late transcripts, missed professional exams, or shorter employment summers hanging over their university careers. And it would mean that, when I’m advising my sister which school to attend for next year, that I’m not using collective bargaining contracts, history and assumptions to tell her which places to avoid.
Thoughts?
-Rob Lanteigne
