NEWS
Monday, March 23, 2015 3
Open Letter:
135 Osgoode students urge Dean Sossin to respect the CUPE
3903 strike and not resume classes until a deal is reached
10 march 2015
editorial note: This open letter was originally
published on the Obiter Dicta website on 11 March,
prior to the resumption of classes on 16 March. It is
reprinted here at the request of a student.
Dear Dean Sossin,
We are writing to express our support for members of
CUPE 3903 currently on strike at York University. As
students and future practitioners of law, we view this
strike as the exercise of a constitutionally-protected
right, one which deserves recognition and ongoing
affirmation from Osgoode Hall Law School.
As others have already made clear, there is no
doubt that the strike has caused distress among
Osgoode students. We join them in apprehension
about the uncertainty of the near future—about finishing coursework by April, writing the bar exam
on schedule, and transitioning smoothly to various
forms of employment. We too have commitments
and responsibilities outside of school that are being
affected, along with plans that may be cancelled
and opportunities that are in jeopardy. As such, we
too hope for a swift resolution to the dispute and the
resumption of our normal, everyday lives. But all of
these anxieties are more than just understandable—
they are to be expected in the context of a strike.
Aside from whatever else it may be, a strike by its
nature is inconvenient. It disrupts the normal functioning of all operations touched by striking workers.
Devalued and stymied at the bargaining table, workers strike to demonstrate and draw power from the
integral contributions they make to the institutions
or enterprises dependent on their labour. The reason
this tactic persists is the same reason it receives protection from law: the very possibility of work stoppage is what animates good faith bargaining in an
adversarial employment relationship characterized
by inequality. Protecting strikes through law is thus a
mechanism to prevent them.
Accordingly, when a strike does occur, it becomes
the duty of all those who take law’s purpose seriously
to translate legal protection into meaningful protection by refusing to cross picket lines. Otherwise,
the constitutional right to strike is reduced to a chimera, a mere paper right enforced in every which way
except the way that matters. Because it is contrary to
Osgoode Hall’s ethos as a law school to partake in
such derogation, we call on Osgoode to respect the
integrity of CUPE 3903’s picket lines by maintaining the suspension of all academic activities until the
strike is over. In addition, we seek to join you, the
Dean, in urging the York administration to negotiate
with the union in order to achieve a fair and reasonable collective agreement at the bargaining table.
Osgoode students want classes to resume swiftly
as well as justly. A commitment to respect picket
lines achieves both these aims: it protects the right
to strike and thereby impels resolution of the dispute
through good faith collective bargaining. We expect
our law school to strike and m