Striking professors at the Université du Québec à Montréal are to tone down their tactics in the last days of the semester, the Quebec Supreme Court ruled last Wednesday. Judge Jean-François de Grandpré granted a 10-day injunction that bans any attempts to intimidate students, staff and faculty, or to block them from entering campus buildings.

UQAM professors are demanding wage increases of 11 per cent over three years and the employment of 300 additional staff. The injunction came after recent one-day strikes and a five-day strike last week, which shut down classes Wednesday and Thursday. Professors have been without contract for nearly two years. Their union, SPUQ, rejected an offer two weeks ago. The offer promised 25 new hires and an immediate four per cent wage hike, according to UQAM.

Last week, online commentators expressed outrage that professors are striking for higher wages during a recession.

“We’re not going to be able to support this [influx of students] so this is the time to invest,” said Carey Nelson, a UQAM language instructor and SPUQ negotiator. Nelson told The Varsity that student enrolment generally increases in difficult economic times, when chances of employment are scarce.

Cries for funding also come in the wake of a 2007 audit that found UQAM on the edge of bankruptcy, due to badly planned real estate undertakings that cost up to $750 million. UQAM professor Beatrix Beisner recently told the CBC that these losses should not have affected professors’ salaries, which she said fall short of their counterparts at other Quebec schools.

“Why should the university suffer as a whole—in terms of its major mandate, which is education—why should that suffer?” Beisner asked.

UQAM has reassured students that classes taught by lecturers, who are represented by a different union and are not striking, will keep running and that the trimester will end as planned. Negotiations between professors and university administration are scheduled to resume after April 6, when professors will return to the university.

With files from Hilary Barlow