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The three units of CUPE Local 3903 are voting at this moment on York University’s most recent contract proposal.
See yesterday’s post for an overview of the strike, now in its 75th day.
Voting will continue until 7 pm tonight, and from 9 am to 7 pm tomorrow, with lunch breaks each day from 1 pm to 3 pm. (Union members can check here for information on where and how to vote.)
In other York strike news, the Canadian Federation of Students, Canada’s national student organization, has come out in support of the CUPE strikers.
The York University strike is coming to a head.
For two and a half months, Canada’s third-largest university has been closed by a strike of CUPE local 3903, representing teaching assistants, graduate assistants, and adjunct faculty. The university has invoked a provision of Ontario labor law to force a one-time vote by the union membership on York’s latest proposal, and that vote will take place this Monday and Tuesday.
If all three units of the local approve the proposal in majority votes, the strike will end immediately and classes may resume as soon as the end of this week. If one or more units reject it, the strike will continue.
The two sides are wrangling over pay increases and job security, but some observers believe that the length of the new contract may be the crucial sticking point. Labor agreements at half a dozen other major Canadian universities expire in 2010, and the two-year deal CUPE is pushing for would allow them to join a multi-campus strike that year, should one develop. (The university is insisting on a three-year contract.)
There has been speculation that the provincial government may attempt to end the strike with back-to-work legislation, but the legislature is in recess until mid-February. The longer the strike goes, the more likely it is that an entire semester will have to be canceled, costing the university millions in lost tuition payments and throwing students’ progress toward degrees into disarray.
Voting begins tomorrow morning, and continues through early evening on Tuesday. Results will likely be announced that night. Check back here for more updates as the story continues to unfold.
January 20 Update: CUPE’s membership rejected the York offer by a decisive margin.
Passage of the DREAM Act has been voted one of the top ten agenda items for the Obama administration by members of change.org. The DREAM Act proposal is the only higher education campaign to make the cut.
According to its change.org sponsors, the DREAM (Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors) Act would open a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants under the age of 30 who…
- were brought to the United States before they turned 16,
- have lived here continuously for five years,
- graduated from a US high school or obtained a GED
- have good moral character with no criminal record, and
- attend college or enlist in the military.
Here’s an article on the campaign to get the DREAM Act into the top ten and a link to DreamActivist, a site that supports passage of the bill.
President-elect Obama is on record in support of the DREAM Act. A statement of support he provided to the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities last year follows the jump…
The change.org website is running a poll on its readers’ top ten “ideas for change in America.”
They say that “the top 10 rated ideas from the final round will be presented to the Obama administration on January 16th at an event at the National Press Club in Washington, DC,” and that at the NPC they will “announce the launch of a national advocacy campaign behind each idea in collaboration with our nonprofit partners to turn each idea into actual policy.”
Anyone can vote, and the polls close at 5pm Eastern time this afternoon. There are several education-oriented ideas among the leading proposals, and the United States Student Association is urging its members and allies to vote for two in particular — passage of the DREAM Act and student loan forgiveness.
Go check it out.
The Texas Student Association, a statewide student advocacy and lobbying group, has officially constituted itself at a meeting on the University of North Texas campus.
Texas’s last statewide student association was founded after the Second World War but went dormant about a decade ago. The new group, organized over the course of the last few months, is moving forward in 2009 with a lobbying agenda that emphasizes pocketbook issues.
A quick Google didn’t turn up a website or contact information for the TSA, but if any of our readers have that info, we’d be glad to post it.
studentactivism.net 
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