Thirty-one days hath Strikevember

"Striketober" is more mellifluous, and I refuse to consider "Strikecember" at the moment, but here we are.  Today is day 31 of #umfa2021 @umfastrike, and everyone is feeling it. During the strike I've been trying to keep to this blog, daily, on strike matters and not my usual personal inanity. But today is/was odd, and I want to talk about it. So as I say, here we are. 

In general, I'm in good spirits, strikewise, though of course we're all tired, emotionally and physically, and anxious about a) reaching an agreement (or going to arbitration, or some combination thereof, which seems to be the current Best Case Scenario) and b) getting back to work. This last introducing a bunch of other anxieties, since we still have to get through the last six or so weeks of our classes, final exam period, and start Winter term's classes, all without an obvious break, except for the week between Christmas and New Years. Which will be welcome, but at the moment we're looking at curtailed exam periods, elimination of much of the midterm break for the winter term, and probably some displacement of Spring and Summer term hours. But what will be will be, and we'll cope, one way or another.

But strikewise, we seem to be very aware of the issues that motivate us in this strike (recruitment, retention, university quality, and so on), and additionally many of us are paying attention to our historical position. If you recall in 2016 we were really the first public sector union subjected to the provincial meddling in negotiation. Seeing our situation, several other unions refused to settle for inadequate negotiated outcomes, and remained without a contract for years following.

Now, we seem to be the first major Canadian university faculty association to go on strike.  I've been trying to keep track of who else is in bargaining right now, but York University in Toronto seems to be the U15 university that's closest (both negotiation-wise and calendar-wise) to going out. (Update: Turns out York isn't in the U15.) York's union in question actually doesn't represent full-time faculty, like UMFA, but contract (sessional) instructors, graduate student instructors, TAs, and so on.  In 2018 CUPE 3903 went on strike for 143 days, apparently the longest academic strike in Canadian history. For context, the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919 was 43 days. Due to Manitoba labour law that can force both sides into binding arbitration after 60 days, we won't go anywhere near that.  By my count, day 60 is December 27th, possibly the 29th depending on if you count the holidays we will have crossed (Remembrance Day and Christmas).

But I have some personal inanity to talk about, which is that this morning I was late to my cluster meeting because, well, after the alarm went off I managed to doze off again. All things considered a couple extra hours of sleep wasn't a bad idea. And I do feel tired, physically and emotionally. But I draw strength from my cluster-mates and the justness of our cause.