Last Tuesday, 450 secretaries and clerical workers at Concordia University in Montreal staged a half-day strike in order to protest for better conditions.
“We’ve been without a contract since 2002,” said André Legault, president of the union representing these support staff at Concordia’s Loyola and Sir George Williams campuses. “It’s time for the university to step up to the plate.”
The strike took place on the first day of registration for winter classes, bringing nearly all activity to a standstill. The average yearly salary for these union members, 80 per cent of whom are women, is $33,000. This is a paltry sum compared to the $350,000 paycheque of outgoing president Claude Lajeunesse, who also received $1.36 million upon departure after serving only two years of his five-year term.
Concordia has not made clear the terms of this agreement, but it was certainly a point of contention during Tuesday’s strike.
In an interview with the Montreal Gazette, Legault said, “[The union workers] can’t understand why someone who is no longer working at the university is getting paid that much money while we’re sitting around here doing really hard work.”
The million-dollar university president is already a feature of several American universities. In 2004, Shirley Ann Jackson, president of Rensselaer Polytechnic in New York, earned $891,400 in addition to the half-million she made serving on multiple boards of directors.
The sharp difference between the wages earned by university employees has also created problems for workers in western Canada. In November 2007, support workers, including caretakers, security staff and lab staff from two Saskatchewan universities began a strike that lasted over four weeks. The 2,400 workers from The University of Regina and the University of Saskatchewan, ended their strike after reaching a tentative deal that included a wage increase of at least 4.5 per cent.
The Concordia union has been pushing for compensation similar to that of the Saskatchewan universities, including wage increases of 4.5 per cent and a better early retirement package. André Legault said that four negotiation dates have been set. “We’re hoping, but there are no guarantees.”
