Tensions at York University Picket Line Are Getting Worse Every Day

Striking graduate students at the University of Toronto have successfully drawn attention to their cause, with other local unions joining in the picketing and noted alum Naomi Klein refusing to cross the picket line if it's still in place when she's scheduled to talk at the school on April 7. Meanwhile, the ongoing strike at York University—which began just a few days later, on March 3—hasn't garnered nearly as much attention.

This is surprising, because if anything, the picket lines at York are more emotionally and physically fraught: a few weeks ago, two picketers were injured in a hit-and-run. And Tuesday, an altercation between picketers and people attempting to drive past the picket involved the destruction of a barricade and one man claiming he was going to "come back and shoot [the picketers] up."

Laura Pin, a third-year PhD candidate at York who was present at the Sentinel Road picket line, explained the situation.

"We have one lane of traffic stopped each direction, and we have about three people talking to drivers, explaining why we're here, telling them about how long the wait will be, and handing out pamphlets with some info," she said. In response to the university's senate executive choosing to resume classes this week, the union had decided to picket more aggressively, by stopping cars for slightly longer. After being stopped for what Pin says was likely around five minutes, people began getting out of their cars to confront picketers. Pin says she was standing further into the line of cars and saw a couple step out of their van first. Video of the incident seems to show a lone man get out of his blue car first, but only the picket line and first few cars are visible.

Some picketers in the video attempt to talk to the angry motorists, but most hang back.

"Our policy is to disengage as much as possible, right?" said Pin. "To say, 'Okay, we'll let you through immediately.'"

Video shows Pin shouting at her fellow picketers to "clear the road" as the man from the blue car walks past picketers and starts moving parts of the physical blockade. After about a minute, he gets in his car, drives past the picket, then gets back out and walks toward picketers. A woman with bright red hair, who says her child has a fever, continues yelling at the picketers until her partner has driven past the picket and she walks off to meet him.

No university security are visible in the video, which runs nearly four minutes in length. Janice Walls, a media relations staff member with York University, responded by email: "York Security is working with the Toronto Police Service daily to increase safety at the picket locations. The management of York Security is speaking with picket captains about safety at the picket lines and how they might all work with Toronto Police. Security at York uses a number of methods to monitor safety including safety officials and vehicles, as well as CCTV coverage at the lines. We are also adding additional York Security resources to help monitor safety at the picket lines."

This appears to be the kind of situation the union, Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) 3903, warned of when the school's senate executive decided to resume classes. Union chair Faiz Ahmed said in a statement, "Opening classes before reaching a settlement will create chaos and confusion among students, who should not be pressured to cross picket lines."

One of the reasons for this "chaos and confusion" is that undergraduate students at York are explicitly not required to cross picket lines for academic purposes, and many professors will not do so out of solidarity. For classes to "resume" means students who do wish to go back have to first figure out which of their classes will start again, and then navigate their way past picket lines.

Yet even before the senate's executive complicated the strike by declaring classes would resume this week, tempers had flared during confrontations between strikers and the public.

"This is not the first time something like this has happened," wrote masters student Nancy Ghuman in a Facebook message. "We've had multiple people hit or 'bumped' by cars, one person was actually carried on top of a car. The general public seems to be getting impatient, as are the people on the picket lines."

Ghuman brought up a point often forgotten in the rhetoric that surrounds labour disputes and strikes: the stress can be immense for all involved.

"We also want to go back to class, we also want to go back to work and get the education we have all paid for," she said. "People may think that being on strike is easy, that you get a break from school, but you don't. The stress level is very high, emotionally, physically, and mentally. There are many graduate students who are waiting to finish this semester and move on to the next steps in their lives, but they cannot do so. We want to get a fair deal with the university and return back to class as soon as possible…. I can say for myself and a lot of others on the picket line, we're tired, we want to resolve this ASAP."

The original version of this article incorrectly stated that the woman in the video said her child had had a seizure.

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