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Hi All,
I'm having a hard time making sense of the timing of the announcements emanating from the SFU central administration regarding the TSSU strike.
Some Key Dates:
-- On Tuesday, we received notice from SFUFA (12:30 p.m.) and SFU (2:30 p.m.) that the TSSU had announced pickets which would begin on Thursday. No official time was given for when the TSSU had declared its intention to establish picket lines.
-- I promptly checked SFU's Strike Policy on Tuesday on SFU's website. It indicated that faculty intending to respect picket lines are required to inform their Dean within 36 hours after the intention to erect picket lines has been announced. That would be by Thursday at approximately 12:30 or 2:30 am. One might read this to mean that faculty intending to respect any picket line announced by the TSSU (e.g., on Oct. 3rd) were required to give notice within the 36 hour window of the TSSU's announcement (whenever that announcement was made).
(Reference to this deadline *now* appears to have been removed from the SFU website. But it was mentioned in a helpful PDF circulated by the FASS Dean on Wednesday at Art. 10.2. It is not a figment of my imagination.)
This morning (Sept. 28), *after* the deadline for notifying our Deans had passed, SFU has for the first time given details of the offer the TSSU rejected on Monday or Tuesday (Sept. 25 or Sept. 26.)
To sum this up:
1) SFU's Strike Policy contemplates serious penalties for faculty who respect picket lines including,
(a) Loss of salary and benefits (b) Unspecified penalties for failure to give notification within a 36 hour window starting from the announcement of the intention to establish picket lines
2) SFU only released critical information for faculty deliberating about whether to respect picket lines after the expiration of SFU's 36 hour deadline (and *before* apparently scrubbing reference to that deadline).
And this is what I don't get.
The TSSU strike was an entirely foreseeable event. SFU knew or should have known there was a high likelihood of its occurrence. Why is the vacuum on relevant policies now so profound that my Dean felt the need to respond by circulating a policy PDF created by the Dean of Science? Why did SFU release pertinent information about the offer, which the TSSU rejected, only today?
Perhaps I'm missing the obvious. But the central administration's response to an entirely predictable event -- one which is playing havoc with our pedagogic vocation -- seems utterly chaotic. Has this administration simply lost track of its responsibilities to its faculty and its students? (I forego trying to answer rhetorical questions.)
Best,
Sam
Sam Black Assoc. Prof. Philosophy, SFU
This note is not AI-generated.
I respectfully acknowledge that SFU is on the unceded ancestral and traditional territories of the səl̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw
(Squamish), xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) and kʷikʷəƛ̓əm (Kwikwetlem) Nations.
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