Ontario students support striking faculty

For the first time in 26 years, the Windsor University Faculty Association went on strike Sept. 17 at the University of Windsor, a university of 16,000 undergraduate and graduate students in southern Ontario.

Windsor University Faculty Association are fighting for union pay scales and working conditions that cover the part-time instructors who now make up to 45 percent of the teaching staff. Photo: WUFA

“This is an all-out effort by our association to send a message loud and clear to this administration that we want a collective agreement,” Brian Brown, president of WUFA, told a crowd of over 1,000 supporters Sept. 19 at the University of Windsor. “But we want it to be fair and equitable and just. And we don’t want to be at the bottom of the scale of Ontario universities.”

The contract expired June 30 and the 1,000 faculty, part-time faculty and librarians worked in good faith without a contract despite the administration’s anti-union actions. On Sept. 4 a strike vote was taken, with 96 percent in support of striking.

The main issues are the administration’s intention to gut the Windsor Salary Standard, a province-wide system of pay equity and seniority that is a fundamental quality-of-education issue; treatment of union members in terms of respect and working conditions, especially for part-time instructors who are now 45 percent of the teaching staff; administration take-back proposals such as reducing the quality of teaching; curriculum and retirement options; and more.

Campus community support continues to build for the striking WUFA members. Students join the picket line daily and held a mass study session protest at a recent Board of Governors meeting. The University of Windsor Student’s Alliance and the Graduate Student Senate (GSS) have sponsored many events, including public forums attended by the union. The administration was invited but never showed.

The WUFA Executive Committee voted unanimously on Sept. 22 that all members who could afford it should give $10 from their weekly strike pay to a student hardship fund to be administered by the Students’ Alliance and the GSS.

On Sept. 25 WUFA set up picket lines which were honored by union construction workers at the brand new $15 million university medical center. WUFA is also doing flying pickets and producing a strike bulletin.

On Sept. 28 a public information session was sponsored by WUFA after the university administration decided to start bargaining in the corporate media. It went so far as to print an ad in the daily Windsor Star that detailed WUFA members’ alleged salaries under the administration’s proposal. The ad angered many union supporters who saw this as an attempt to pit the community against WUFA members. WUFA says the ad’s salary figures are wholly untrue and it is the administration’s mismanagement and bloated salaries that should be fixed and cut, not the workers’.

At a mass rally Sept. 26, the Canadian Association of University Teachers extended a $1 million dollar credit line to WUFA. Supporters came from across Canada, including union members who flew in from Nova Scotia and Cape Breton. Representatives from the Union of Part-Time Faculty and the AAUP-AFT at Wayne State University in Detroit attended as well. Canadian Auto Workers president Ken Lewenza has pledged his union’s support.

To send solidarity messages, resolutions and donations, e-mail [email protected]; write Faculty Association [WUFA], 366 Sunset Ave., Windsor, Ontario, Canada N9B 3P4; or call 519-253-3000 (extension 3366).

Pfeifer is the staff organizer of the Union of Part-Time Faculty (UPTF) at Wayne State University in Detroit.