Category: Daily updates

Generally musings of the day, usually accompanied by a photograph

April

Close on the heels of the last period of exceptional activity, another such span is just beginning.

Today, I need to write a paper on Ross Zucker’s Democratic Distributive Justice, to be submitted by 6pm.

Monday, there is a Toronto350.org board meeting, where we will hopefully be able to finalize our by-laws. There is also a divestment planning meeting from 6-8pm, which conflicts.

Tuesday, I have my markets and justice course, and then the normal Toronto350.org planning meeting.

Wednesday, I have my first tutorials since the strike began. I have also been asked to take part in the dramatic reading of a play.

By April 10th, we need to have the final version of the divestment brief ready for the committee.

On April 17th, we are actually presenting to the committee.

By April 21st, I need to write another term paper for my markets and justice course.

And by the 1st of May, I need somewhere new to live.

Brief update beta

Thanks to 72 hours spent awake and a star team of quick-turnaround proofreaders, we were able to get an updated version of the fossil fuel divestment brief to the ad hoc committee in time for their meeting tomorrow.

Also, there is a union meeting happening right now to decide if the strike should go to binding arbitration.

Now, I just need to finish photographing the Walter Gordon Symposium.

CUPE 3902 remains on strike

After working on the brief from 10am to nearly midnight yesterday, I decided to go to sleep without learning the result of the latest CUPE 3902 ratification vote. I had a difficult time of it, experiencing the worst headache I can remember for almost the entire night. I found that putting pressure on one part of my right forehead helped slightly to alleviate it.

This morning, I was surprised to see that the latest tentative agreement had been rejected, despite significant efforts from the union administration to push it: with most of them arguing for acceptance at the last general meeting, emails from the union calling for members to vote yes, and even robocalls from CUPE 3902 local chair Erin Black urging members to vote yes.

The breakdown of the vote ended up as 992 in favour, 1101 opposed, 4 spoiled ballots, and 27 rejected ballots.

At least one member of the bargaining team said she would resign if this tentative agreement was rejected. We will see if any other personnel changes take place, as well as what sorts of escalation will be put to use this week.

This is a critical time period for the strike. As of now, it’s still possible to salvage a reasonably normal semester, if an agreement is reached soon. TAs can begin with the backlog of grading, perhaps replace some missed tutorials and labs, and be available for final exam inviligation and grading. If the strike goes on much longer, however, that option becomes less and less plausible and the possibility of the university invoking some sort of academic continuity policy to make TA labour unnecessary rises. The extension of the term into the ‘summer’ (which at U of T means ‘May’) also seems to become more plausible.

I am going to keep doing photographic work and picketing as much as I can, while still trying to get the brief update done before the ad hoc committee meets on the 27th…

More thoughts about the strike

I am in a bit of a vise right now. Nobody else can finish the fossil fuel divestment brief update, but the strike and picket duties are ongoing. Even totally neglecting my PhD work, reconciling the two is impossible. And now I have come down with a cold.

The prospect of pulling back from union duties is uncomfortable. The University of Toronto’s position remains unconscionable. They are failing to recognize how running an institution of learning requires mutual respect, and some respect for social justice. Being unable to be fully effective for two social justice fights – and two distinct groups of allies – is vexing.

Tomorrow afternoon there is a union meeting to discuss the latest offer from the employer. It is based in a way on the proposal from our meeting last Friday, where we decided to give up on aspirations like poverty-line pay for TAs in exchange for structural gains in the contract: recognition that tuition and the funding package are appropriate bargaining items for the union, and that funding assigned to individuals makes more sense and is more just than pools of funding that must be split among as many TA graduate students as the university cares to admit. The offer from the administration being voted on tomorrow jettisons the structural gains being sought, raising questions about what purpose the strike has served and how much more corroded and precarious the position of graduate students at U of T will become.

As far as TA work goes, I am happy to strike for as long as is required to get a deal with real gains. At the same time, the special burden of completing the brief weighs heavily on me.

Today

  • Take the bus to U of T Mississauga, reading for my markets and justice class on the way
  • Picket and photography shift in Mississauga
  • Keep reading on the bus back
  • Markets and justice seminar
  • Work on the brief and photo post-processing
  • Toronto350.org weekly planning meeting
  • Work on the brief and photo post-processing

Hopefully tomorrow’s shift will be back at the downtown campus.

Saturday pickets, round two

I was back on the picket lines today, completing my second week with 20 hours of official duties (basically not counting all the time spent post-processing photos from the strike).

After the day’s picketing ended, there was an informal meeting at the strike HQ where people discussed yesterday’s meeting, the prospects for escalation, and other general matters of concern. People are divided on all sorts of questions, but a couple stand out in particular. First, there is a disagreement between those who think escalation is necessary and desirable (either to secure a deal better than yesterday’s proposal, or even to secure the proposal itself) and others who are either personally unwilling to escalate or who think it would be counter-productive as a consequence of causing more inconvenience to other members of the university community.

People were also quite confused about the proposal from yesterday: particularly about whether it represents our new official bargaining position or whether it represents the absolute minimum the membership is willing to accept.

With no pickets on Sundays, I get a “break” tomorrow to work on coordinating the brief. Monday, I will out on the picket lines once more.

Inequality, instability, and politics

The inequalities of being at U of T are weirdly mixed together and overlapping in my life now. It’s weird to live in one of the most expensive parts of Canada, but regularly find it worthwhile to walk for 90 minutes rather than spend $3 for the subway. It’s weird to be at one of the world’s better universities, and to observe the way in which resources are allocated. Teaching staff and research staff essential to the basic purpose of the university have to fight for pay increases that keep up with inflation, yet we keep building luxury sports facilities. It’s strange to turn out my empty palms for beggars, no longer because I think direct financial transfers to them are more damaging than beneficial, but because it’s now necessary to think about every dollar.

Faced with all this and looking at the political landscape in Canada and the United States, there seems to be a sad consensus among politicians that action on the necessary scale is politically impossible. I would like to see a major North American political party say that we have totally screwed up policy-making, especially since the 1980s. Other countries like Scandinavian states are obviously governed much better, so we should abandon the failed Reagan/Thatcher/Mulroney project and establish a system that works better, both for those who are living today and for those in future generations.

Prioritization

Today I had to pull out from an academic collaboration because I don’t have time for that, striking, preparing my PhD research proposal, finding somewhere to live after Massey, and updating the fossil fuel divestment brief.

This is a further illustration of why it is probably pointless to aspire to any sort of long-term work in a university (don’t tell your committee members, though, lest they cast you adrift).

Nonetheless, I think the situation is OK. Fighting climate change is the most important thing any of us can do and, judging by the weak-willed involvement of most U of T faculty, being a professor isn’t much help in the struggle. We have to assume that the world is going to become more and more challenged by forces of destruction, and our chance for countering that depends on new strategies, coalitions, and ideologies.

One advantage of being a student for so long, and of spending times working for good pay paying off debt or saving for more school, is the expectation of a modest standard of living. As a brilliant essay by my hero George Monbiot points out, a big part of freedom is being able to live cheaply.

We have an exceptional struggle ahead of us, and nobody who aspires to social justice can really aspire to personal prosperity at the same time. We can aspire to be among the people who future generations curse less – the ones who didn’t rationalize excessive consumption or dwell in apathy, but who tried to be strategic and political and focused on what matters most.