It has now been just five days since the launch of our new faculty union, the Association of McGill Professors of the Faculty of Arts, and we are starting to make some waves! On Monday, April 8, CBC Montreal came to the McGill campus right after the total eclipse to visit the picket line of…
Tag: strike
McGill Arts Professors Launch Our New Union: AMPFA
On April 4, 2024, McGill university professors from the Faculty of Arts rallied on the steps of the McCall MacBain Arts Building in the midst of an April blizzard to launch our new labour union, the Association of McGill Professors of the Faculty of Arts, or AMPFA. We were following the trail blazed by our colleagues in the Faculties of Law and Education, who have already unionized.
We were joined by striking graduate student teaching assistants, members of AGSEM, along with members of other campus unions and supportive undergraduate students.
Below I reprint the remarks I delivered on the Arts steps to open the rally.
To My McGill Colleagues: Don’t Scab On Your Students
Legal technicalities aside, the fact is that the McGill administration is trying to enlist professors on the side of management against our own graduate students. The Quebec Labour Tribunal will have to clarify whether or not this violates Quebec’s anti-scab law. But beyond the law, McGill’s efforts to undermine our TAs also raises important questions about the erosion of undergraduate and graduate education and training at McGill, not to mention concerns about the professional autonomy of professors and academic freedom.
What the LA teachers’ strike tells us about labor’s future
On January 25, the Washington Post published a piece of mine on the recently-concluded Los Angeles teachers’ strike. While it was certainly a decisive victory for the members of United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA), the LA teachers’ union, it also has broader implications for the US labor movement more broadly—particularly in light of last year’s Supreme Court…
Barry Eidlin 