Hostage Situation at York University

Nearly a quarter of a century ago, the residents of northern California sat glued to their television sets as images of an attractive, twenty-year-old woman committing a brazen robbery of a Bay area bank were broadcast across the region. They would soon learn that blonde locks and a pretty smile weren't the only things that set this suspect apart from the typical bank robber. The daughter of a publishing tycoon, Patty Hearst was kidnapped almost two years earlier by the Symbianese Liberation Army, a left-wing guerrilla group seeking to exchange the wealthy socialite for incarcerated members from within their ranks. Over the two years that followed, she had come to sympathize and ultimately identify with the plight of her captors so strongly that she agreed to join forces with them. During this period, Hearst was famously captured on a bank security camera waving a semiautomatic rifle at terrified patrons. She remained on the lam for another 17 months until her stint with the SLA came to an end in September, 1975, when she was apprehended in a San Francisco apartment along with several of her SLA comrades.

During her trial, Hearst's lawyer argued that his client suffered from Stockholm syndrome, a psychological condition that causes hostages and other victims of ongoing abuse to exhibit intense loyalty to their abusers.  This story is particularly relevant because of its parallels with the current, 9-week-old strike by teaching assistants and contract faculty at York University.  In response to the strike, the administration has canceled all classes, leaving the school's nearly 60 000 students in a precarious state of limbo.

Not only do students miss out on classes but those who work on campus, have been without a source of income since the campus shut down.  This also makes things extremely complicated for foreign students, whose visas expire on a fixed date and who may end up losing the entire school year if the strike forces classes to extend into the summer.  This could also affect students applying to graduate programs that require grades by a certain date as well as those applying for internships whose start dates coincide with the end of the spring semester.

Many, including the left-leaning Toronto Star, have criticized the union (CUPE 3903) for being unreasonable in their demands and many students and even some union members blame the union leadership for the predicament in which the students now find themselves.  After a cursory investigation into the context out of which the strike arose, one finds that this stance in well-founded.

The abridged version goes as follows:  York's teaching assistants and contract faculty recently sat down with the school's administration to renegotiate their contract which expired in 2008.  At issue were wages, job security for contract faculty, and the length of the new contract.  The union initially asked for an astounding 40% wage hike, and a two-year contract as opposed to the standard three-year contract.  The two-year term is significant because it means that the contract will expire at the same time as a number of other universities across the province, giving the union unprecedented leverage should they threaten to strike again at that time.  The administration has refused to capitulate on this issue although both sides have made concessions on the wage front.  The administration is offering a 3% wage increase in each of the next three years while the union is demanding 4% and seemingly refuses to budge.

Realizing the intransigence of the union's negotiators, in December the administration asked the union to agree to binding arbitration, a process in which a third party arbitrator comes up with a compromise by looking at the positions of both sides as well as by looking at the compensation of workers performing similar work in other jurisdictions.  The decision of the arbitrator, once made, is binding.  The union refused.  This is likely because they recognized that York's TA's are already the highest paid and receive the most benefits in the country therefore binding arbitration would inevitably have resulted in a contract that was much closer to the administration's offer than to their own.

For almost a month the administration dug their heels in and refused to return to the bargaining table.  While the union cites this as evidence that the administration was acting in bad faith, as we shall see, the rationale for refusing to negotiate was sound.  Given the fact that the union had displayed an utter disregard for - and exploitation of - the suffering of the student body, an innocent third party in the conflict, they had established their role as the hostage takers in this scenario.  Now, it's understood by almost all governments throughout the world that you don't negotiate with hostage takers and the reasons are quite clear.  First, they tend to be highly unreasonable in their demands (Check!).  Second, acquiescence can encourage further hostage taking in the future, an outcome that one would wish to avoid at all costs.

The CUPE website has posted a manifesto in which they defend their ostensibly in defensible position.  As one might expect, it contains nothing more than sanctimonious, circular arguments that warrant neither rebuttal nor repetition.  But for those of you who are curious, you can find the document here.

In the immediate aftermath of the strike announcement and subsequent cancellation of classes, York students, perhaps still cognizant of the 2001 strike that lasted 11 weeks, began forming activist groups to oppose the strike.  The most prominent of these is known as Yorknothostage.com.  Leaving aside the absurdity of naming your group after your website and not the other way around, this organization seems entirely confused about whom they're fighting.  They drafted a position statement and even organized several rallies in which they emphatically call for an end to the strike, yet they claim to be neutral with regard conflict between the union and the administration.  I've found that this is indicative of the overall sentiment among such groups.  In fact, I identified no less than 6 anti-strike facebook groups founded by York students and not a single one of them had the moxy to voice direct criticism of the union.  And keep in mind, these are students who oppose the strike!  To be sure, there are thousands of others who vehemently support the strike and place all the blame at the foot of the administration.

What makes Yorknothostage.com's position especially ridiculous is that their main gripe is with the provincial government.  In fact, their last rally concluded with chants admonishing the premiere for not acting sooner to pass back-to-work legislation.  And here's where their collective Stockholm syndrome can be diagnosed.  Back-to-work legislation would mean that the contract dispute gets settled via binding arbitration!  In other words, what they're asking for is precisely the same thing that the administration has been supporting for the past month.

Much like Patty Hearst, these York students have no illusions about whether or not they're being held hostage, a fact to which their name attests.  But somehow they refuse to take part in the effort to have their assailants held accountable in the court of public opinion.  I suppose it would be asking too much to expect these neo-liberal activist wannabes to deviate from their formula by criticizing the actions of a helpless union engaged in a struggle with an evil conglomerate of wealthy executives.  And this is the problem.  I have always considered myself a man of the left, but my main criticism has always been that the left is too steeped in orthodoxy.  We unconditionally support causes that symbolically fit with what has traditionally been the leftist agenda and on too many occasion this has been our downfall.  The current strike is no exception.

Patty Hearst was initially sentenced to 35 years in prison although that sentence was later commuted to a 7-year term, of which she served only 22 months.  I just hope the forces that determine how severe an impact this strike will have on students lives are equally forgiving.

AlexsJenkins