Yesterday, members of the Social Work Student Association (SWSA) picketed outside of Wilson Hall, the building that houses the School of Social Work. 

Members of the SWSA voted in favour of an unlimited general strike at a General Assembly (GA) held on March 14. With 47 in favour, 29 against, and one abstention, the final vote represented a 61 per cent majority, and made the SWSA the first McGill faculty association to join the Quebec-wide unlimited student strike. 

About a dozen social work students and other students in solidarity set up the picket lines at 7:30 a.m. yesterday morning and remained there until 2:30 p.m., holding signs and encouraging students not to go to class. 

“We chose a soft picket line in the GA because we’re not too comfortable with confrontation and we didn’t want to create conflict,” Ariane Duplessis, executive co-ordinator of SWSA, said.

Most professors held class despite the lowered attendance, added Jade Mathieu, SWSA internal coordinator. During the day, some students crossed the picket lines. 

“We’ve been encouraging them not to, and we’ve been explaining why they shouldn’t,” she said. “At the end of the day, it’s really too bad that they’re not respecting the deciision made by the student body in a GA that they were invited to.”

A smaller number of students are expected to picket today,  as many social work students have fieldwork on Tuesdays. However, Duplessis expects pickets to be active after Wednesday. 

On Monday, March 26, the GA will reconvene to vote on whether to renew the unlimited strike.

“The strike motion [passed on March 14] included a provision to have future revisions pass by a simple majority vote of 50 per cent plus 1,” Radney Jean-Claude and Echo Parent-Racine, VP externals for SWSA, wrote in a press release.

Both VP externals cited a commitment to social equity, justice, and advocacy as factors that compelled their faculty to join the unlimited strike, although they recognized that there are certain risks in pursuing an unlimited strike, as enumerated in recent emails sent by the administration.

“I am in opposition of the tuition hikes and I fully support an unlimited strike,” first year social work student Leah Freeman said. “As future social workers, we try to abide by the Code of Ethics stipulated by the Canadian Association of Social Workers.”

“From this perspective, as social workers we feel that tuition hikes are in opposition to social justice as they will create barriers for individuals and reduce choice especially to those who are already marginalized, disadvantaged, and vulnerable,” she added. 

This sentiment was echoed by the VP externals, who, as spokespersons for the council as a whole, suggested that the values embodied by the social work profession compelled them to pursue an unlimited strike for the purposes of attaining greater social justice and accessibility to education.

“It is appropriate that the undergraduate social work students voted in favour for an unlimited strike, in order to promote the belief that education is a right and not a privilege, while taking a firm stand against the upcoming tuition increase initiated by the Quebec government,” Jean-Claude and Parent-Racine wrote in their press release.

According to the press release, other motions and amendments of note included “exempt[ing] the strike from affecting the fieldwork placement.” Motions to have a mobilization committee and a voluntary demonstration were also passed.

At the time of publication, the faculty of social work was unavailable for comment. However, McGill stated in an email to students that it does not recognize these motions as strikes but as boycotts, and classes will continue as usual. 

“I hope that we have the resolve to continue for as long as the Liberal Government seeks to increase barriers to education and so long as the McGill administration continues to lobby against the interest of the students,” Freeman said regarding the duration of the strike.

“We have strength in numbers. If students do not show up to class, what can teachers really do?” she added.

In addition, about 25 students from the Association des étudiant(es) en langue et literature françaises inscrit(es) aux études superieures (ADELFIES)  gathered in front of the Arts Building yesterday following a March 16 vote to go on strike for five days. 

On March 23, ADELFIES will vote on whether to renew the strike.

-Additional reporting by Carolina Millán Ronchetti