McGill University law professors’ union agrees to suspend strike, resume classes

MONTREAL — McGill University law professors will return to classrooms this week after their union suspended a strike that had lasted since the start of the fall semester.

The school’s administration and the Association of McGill Professors of Law say they will develop a system to negotiate collective agreements jointly with other faculty unions, and classes will resume by Oct. 3.

McGill has been pushing for faculty unions to work together to avoid what it calls a “Kafkaesque situation” that would require the administration to negotiate separately with a multitude of unions.

The union says if an agreement on collective bargaining is reached by Oct. 7, the university will drop its legal challenge of the law faculty’s right to unionize – the professors’ key demand since they elected not to return to classrooms in late August. The union says if it can’t agree with the university on a “federated system” for negotiating work conditions with other faculties in the next week, it will resume the strike on Oct. 8.

“This solution is a win for everyone at McGill,” said union president and McGill law professor Evan Fox-Decent in a statement Tuesday. “Through our first collective agreement, we will set a pattern that will serve all McGill professors, students and staff into the future.”

In a joint message to law students, Fox-Decent and McGill provost Christopher Manfredi said they have agreed that the strike will be suspended until a meeting with an arbitrator on Oct. 8. “During this period the parties will try to find a federated approach between the different professors’ unions to negotiate collective agreements with the university,” they wrote.

The news comes a day after McGill threatened to cancel the fall semester as of Tuesday if the union didn’t agree to a deal. The university told students on Monday that it was not plausible for courses to begin two months into the semester and still finish on time. The union now says the suspension means that students will be able to complete their semester without any loss of credits or delay.

The joint message to students on Tuesday does not say whether McGill will drop a judicial review of the law faculty’s union certification, which was granted by Quebec’s labour tribunal in November 2022. The law faculty is the first group of professors to unionize at the university, though most non-faculty staff are unionized. Since the law faculty union was formed, professors in the departments of education and arts have also filed for union certification.

McGill is fighting the certification of the education and arts unions before the labour tribunal. Its legal challenge of the law faculty’s certification was due to be heard at the Quebec Superior Court in December.

In a statement, McGill said the legal battle “is not about opposing the unionization of professors,” and is instead about avoiding an obligation to negotiate separately with each faculty. “Such a scenario could lead to a multitude of independent unions representing professors at the university and would create a Kafkaesque situation,” the statement said. “It is the Canadian norm within universities that professors across faculties join together in a union.”

The law faculty union, which includes more than 40 professors, says that if a deal is reached for faculty associations to negotiate collective agreements together, the university will stop fighting the certification of all three unions, and the strike will end permanently.

McGill’s law professors have yet to secure their first collective agreement, and their other demands include better pay and more involvement in the faculty’s governance. But the union says those issues can be resolved with the arbitrator once the judicial review is off the table.

The law faculty first walked off the job after classes ended last spring, but opted for a more disruptive approach by refusing to teach classes when they resumed their strike at the start of the fall semester.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 1, 2024.

Maura Forrest, The Canadian Press