McGill Tribune

Some may say that a university is only as strong as its professors and researchers, but there’s an argument that the backbone of any school is made up of a less celebrated group: the administrative, technical, and logistical staff who run the libraries, the tech programs, the labs; who clean the buildings, collect the garbage cans, and help hundreds of confused and clueless students every day.

Underfunding has led to budget cuts and McGill University Non-Academic Certified Association’s (MUNACA) benefits package has suffered, while the abysmal salary increase proposed by the administration is not enough to account for inflation.

The Tribune respects MUNACA workers’ right to strike and recognizes the legitimacy of their concerns.  Deputy Provost (Student Life and Learning) Morton Mendelson, claims that the package offered to MUNACA, as a whole, is comparable to other universities, while MUNACA claims that the benefits are lacking and that, although the salary cap is reasonable, wages increase at an inordinately slow rate.  The truth is probably somewhere in the middle, and that’s where we hope the strike will end: a compromise somewhere between MUNACA’s demands and the university’s offerings, despite the constraints imposed by the University’s projected $6 million operating deficit for the 2011-12 year.

While students will choose whether or not to cross the picket line depending on their political sentiments, the SSMU’s statement on MUNACA—which makes it clear that they endorse the strike and encourage students to stand in solidarity with MUNACA—can hardly be said to represent the student body as a whole. Students, whose primary concern is to attend classes, shouldn’t be obligated or pressured into joining the picket line.

The SSMU’s statement comes from a policy passed at a General Assembly in 2006—attended by fewer than two hundred students—which  requires the SSMU’s general support for any unionized workers on campus, a policy we can no longer assume to be representative of the interests of the current student population.  

As tuition-paying students, we should be urging MUNACA and McGill to reach an agreement as quickly as possible; but we should not feel obliged to side with either party.