Website aims to provide students with timely information about potential strike
Yuni Kim
News Editor
@YuniKimchi
In light of the strike deadline of April 12 approaching, a group of students have banded together to set up an anti-strike website called “JUST SAY NO TO STRIKE.”
The twist?
Most of them belong to the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Local 3903, the union representing teaching assistants, graduate assistants, and others at York—the same union that could very well be striking in April.
“Students during the last strike didn’t have a voice,” says Saria*, a representative from the group. “Our intention is to get the information out to the student body. We think the strike is ridiculous.”
While she and her friends in CUPE 3903 voted against passing the Strike Mandate, 66 per cent of the 30 per cent turnout cast their ballots voted in favour.
“Only 718 votes said ‘yes.’ They determined the fate of over 50,000 students. That’s pretty inequitable,” Saria says. She is skeptical of CUPE’s ability to communicate with its membership. “I think a lot of the union members didn’t even know the vote was happening.”
Even so, she hopes to provide York students—around 55,000 of them—with timely information and updates about the impending situation.
“It’s evident that CUPE isn’t bargaining with the university,” she says. “They always state publicly that they want to avoid a strike, but I don’t see their actions reflecting that.”
The website openly puts more pressure and criticism against the union than the administration. However, Saria maintains that the bargaining process is not balanced at all and openly admits the website is geared to “definitely focus on CUPE.”
“It’s not really a fair fight between CUPE and the university, because CUPE has the ability to go on strike,” she says. “CUPE also can openly criticize the administration, and the admin can’t use the same language [against the union]. Our website is definitely more critical of CUPE.”
From the hundreds of comments left by visitors, the reaction so far has been mixed.
“A lot of the membership supporters have been engaging in the dialogue with students,” she says. “A lot of people are against the strike.”
Saria doesn’t blame CUPE representatives and supporters for advocating a strike.
“I understand that’s their job,” she says. “But the general student body, it’s hard to get them info and get them out for it.”
However, it didn’t stop unknown solicitors from trying to buy out the website, or try to uncover who is behind it.
“Someone tried to go through the website to find out who we were, but we’re on a private server,” explains Saria. “And we received an email from someone who wanted to purchase the website, and CUPE has tried to find out who we were.”
Saria and her friends intend to remain anonymous. They believe that their message should be a focal point, and not draw attention to the individuals running the website.
“We’re just a few people,” she says. “We want to remain anonymous. It’s mostly due to the fact that we all have friends and colleagues and professors that wouldn’t agree with this viewpoint. This is a heated and politicized conversation, but we don’t want to jeopardize our relationships with these people.”
When contacted, CUPE 3903 chair Karen Walker says she was unaware of the website’s existence and declined to comment.
“JUST SAY NO TO STRIKE,” in the meantime, is preparing for another update.
“We hope there isn’t a strike,” says Saria. “The whole of our campaign was to stop things before they happened. We’ll wait and see what CUPE’s statement would be, and we’ll definitely have to reassess what we can do.”
Saria was, along with several other students running justsaynotostrike.com, an undergraduate when the three-month long strike of 2008-2009 effectively shut down the university and suspended all classes until the strike was finally put to an end by a back-to-work legislation initiated by Dalton McGuinty’s Liberal government in late January.
*Name has been changed to a suitable Zelda reference.
