Category Archives: Student Movement

Quebec Students Flood Montreal in March Against Tuition Hikes

Photo by Dave Sidaway, The Gazette

Historically, at least over the last fifty years, Quebec students have been immensely successful in checking the powers of government and universities from unilaterally raising tuition and other expenses for higher education.  Large, focused, unified, and sustained protests by Quebec students over the years have been influential in keeping tuitions among the lowest in Canada.  Knowing this, there is no way the students will back down from this latest and increasingly vocal series of small resistances and large demonstrations, protests, and strikes.

Today in Montreal, “tens of thousands of activists filled Montreal’s downtown core Thursday to protest tuition increases. Students demonstrating Thursday in Montreal and across the province, say higher fees mean higher debt for them and their parents. The protesters reject the government’s position that student aid, offered to about 35 per cent of students and based on a system of loans, will ease the debt burden.”

Read more Montreal Gazette 

UBC Frets over Strike Votes on Campus

CUPE 116 members overwhelmingly approved a strike motion last week and CUPE 2278, Graduate Teaching Assistants, vote on a strike motion on Thursday.  AVP, Human Resources, Lisa Castle circulated today an advisory that “the University has concerns with the manner in which the Union [CUPE 2278] is presenting information to support a positive vote.  They state on their website that the University’s negotiating team has not listened to them.”

The GTAs are countering that a “‘yes’ vote is a show of support… And the threat of a strike means our issues have to be taken seriously; a strong positive strike vote makes it possible for us to make gains at the table.”

Montreal Students Blockade Champlain Bridge

Photo Montreal Gazette

Education Minister Line Beauchamp, who promised the government won’t budge in its plan to raise university tuition by $1,625 over five years, told protesters to stop inconveniencing the workers whose taxes pay for their studies. Montreal Mayor Gérald Tremblay said the five weeks of strike activities were having a negative effect on the city’s economy, and called on Quebec to help pay the expenses.

Coming on the heels of recent demonstrations that blocked the Metropolitain Expressway and Jacques Cartier Bridge, and led to vandalism and 226 arrests when combined with the march against police brutality, the student protests have been facing a growing chorus of negativism from a disgruntled populace.

But rather than hurting the cause, the public backlash will actually help propel it forward, communications specialists predicted.

And organizers said the disruptions will escalate soon unless the government starts negotiating.

“ For the general population (blocking the Champlain Bridge) might seem overboard,” said Anna Kruzynski, head of the graduate program at Concordia’s School of Community and Public Affairs and a strike supporter. “But if you look historically over time, you’ll see these kind of strong tactics … and other actions that aim to disrupt the regular functioning of society actually end up having good effects after the fact. They do contribute to the government responding positively to demands that are legitimate demands.

Read more: Montreal Gazette

UBC Teaching Assistants Taking Strike Vote

CUPE 2278, the graduate teaching assistants union at the University of British Columbia, is taking a strike vote on Thursday, 22 March.  The bargaining environment for the GTA union has been awful for a number of years.  The current contract dates to 2005 and recent attempts to bargain with UBC have been frustrated by the BC Public Sector Employers’ Council’s “net zero mandate” and the university’s unwillingness to grant the level of respect the GTAs deserve. The union is asking if it is “okay to let an employer profit off your work at a comparatively lower cost and then balance its budget out of your pocket by passing on its expenses?”

The 2005 contract was rolled over in the last round but signs suggest that CUPE 2278 will not roll over again under conditions of exploitation.  The union was forced to a full scale strike in the spring of 2003– a successful strike that reminded students, faculty members, and administrators just how vital GTAs are to the functioning of the University.  As was the case in 2003, CUPE 2278 is currently preparing research-based information for the UBC community and will likely have to counter the employer’s aggressive campaign to malign the GTAs and misinform the campus.

150 Arrested in Montreal Student Movement

Montreal Gazette — More than 100 people were arrested and two were injured after a protest by Montreal students turned ugly on Thursday evening, with police firing tear gas into the crowd. The protest, a joint demonstration against rising tuition fees and police brutality began at about rush hour, but was confronted by Montreal police outfitted in riot gear. About 2,000 protesters headed north through the city, then west along Sherbrooke Street, but no police were visible along the route, although they were positioned on adjacent streets and in the city’s subway system. When about six officers did appear, a few protesters started throwing rocks at them. At one intersection, police fired off two loud stun grenades, sending a panic through the crowd. Protesters ran in all directions, but riot police formed a line, and banging on their shields with their batons, marched forward, shoving demonstrators north…. A young woman, who didn’t want to give her name, held a bag of ice to her right eye after a police officer whacked her with his baton. “(Riot police) were coming towards us and my friend dropped his cellphone so I bent down to pick it up with my arms raised in the air, so one hit me in the face and my back,” she said. Police made the majority of the evening’s arrests in front of a downtown library…. those arrested were just standing still, arms locked, in front of the library chanting. “They were the least provocative of the whole march.”

Photo by Graham Hughes, Montreal Gazette

Read more: Montreal Gazette

Concordia Student Union Votes to Strike

Students at the Concordia Student Union General Assembly overwhelmingly approved a one-week strike to begin 15 March.  A second motion passed in the GA sets the stage for students to block entry of students and professors wanting to cross the line and enter classrooms.  Both motions build on the student movement in Quebec against rising tuition costs.  The vote was by simultaneous show of hands in four venues on campus, as secret ballot was unfeasible.

The Concordia VP External conceded that “at the end of the day, the students spoke.”  The students are considering weekly GAs to extend the strike as necessary.  More at The Link.

Students 1-day Occupy Montreal Street and University

Last week ended in violence as police clamped down on students in Montreal.  The student movement in Quebec is in full career, now three weeks in, as protests escalate against rising tuition and other costs to education.

Image from The Link

This week began with L’Université du Québec à Montréal students occupying a campus building and street. “When the administration caught wind of the students’ idea, they closed the building that the demonstrators planned on using.  They responded by breaking into the building, taking back their art supplies for the “creativity night” and moving the event to the DS building on Ste. Catherine and Sanguinet St.”  More at The Link.

 

Concordia Students Say Let the Strikes Begin

6,380 Concordia students are on strike with more departmental general assemblies discussing strike action.  A Concordia Student Union vote is set for 7 March and a planned, four-day strike begins on 26 March. See The Link for more

BC Secondary Students Walk Out in Protest

It takes a ton of courage for a student to walk out of school and today these young citizens demonstrated en masse across the province.  Every teacher should stand proud as their students stand side by side with one voice.  Every parent of these kids should feel the payoff.  And the students themselves have to know they make the difference for all of us.  This is education (see slide show below).

At the Vancouver Art Gallery, at least 1,500 students convened around 2:00 and stood, spoke, and shouted in solidarity with teachers and the BCTF.  Students at Eric Hamber Secondary seem to have been the first group, exiting the school around 11:00 this morning.  Despite the typically uncooperative weather (5C and rainy), the students were still protesting through the late afternoon.

It has been quite some time since BC saw a student movement but what struck me most was how many showed up and how well organized the demonstration was.  These kids know their politics and how to win hearts.  Signs everywhere with the critique of the BC government’s decision-making loud and clear, a young woman kicked things off: “BC” she shouted and 1,500 hollered back “students”… “BC” she shouted and 1,500 screamed “teachers.”  That’s a solid show of force.

As post-secondary students in BC deal with compounding challenges that seem relentless, let’s hope the high school students spark this from grass roots to an all out BC student movement.  Quebec post-secondary students are putting everything on the line right now.  Time to take inspiration from the younger crowd to stand up and be heard BC post-secondary students!

BC Students Walk Out March 2012 Slide Show (photos by S. Petrina)

BC Students Walking Out on Government

Thousands of BC students are set to walk out this afternoon in support of public education and their teachers, and in protest of the government’s draconian legislation Bill 22.  They’re making “their voices heard in the prolonged teachers’ dispute with the province.”

See updates at CBC and Facebook

Quebec Students Met with Police Force

As thousands of students protested tuition hikes outside the provincial legislature in Quebec City today, they were met with police force and tear gas. The protest was initially peaceful but when a group of students crossed barriers erected around the national assembly, the riot squad pushed back and deployed tear gas.

Photo (Jacques Boissinot / THE CANADIAN PRESS)

Read more: CTV News

UBC Graduate Students Move Toward Aggressive Bargaining

University of British Columbia Graduate Students Local CUPE 2278, still negotiating the extension of the 2006-2010 Agreement, resolved that they are “tired of struggling year after year against rising inflation and tuition costs while some UBC employees are financially protected from these concerns…. Have we set a date for a strike vote? No. Has there been an official strike vote yet? No. Have we been given the mandate to stop taking crap and use every tool available to us to get taken seriously at the table? You better believe it.”  Those in support of bargaining agency will recall the courageous 2278 strike of 2003.

See CUPE 2278 UBC Graduate Students and Ubyssey for more.

Concordia Students 5-Day Sleep-In Protest

Beginning today, students at Concordia University will be moving en masse to the W. McConnell Library and staying for the remainder of the week.  The 5-day sleep-in is in protest of pending tuition hikes and increasing burdens trickled and poured down on students within an economy that is failing.  About 48,000 students throughout Quebec are  boycotting classes, “many indefinitely,” in protest.

Photograph by: Phil Carpenter , Montreal Gazette files. Read more: Montreal Gazette

Student Activism Gathers Force in Montreal

MONTREAL – About 15,000 students rallied Thursday afternoon at Phillip’s Square to protest tuition hikes.

On Tuesday, about 36,000 students took part in an unlimited strike to oppose tuition hikes – about 16,000 of them from CEGEPs and the rest from departments at the Université de Montréal, the Université du Québec à Montréal and the Université Laval à Québec.

Organizers claim more than 65,000 students are on strike in Quebec.

Read more: Montreal Gazette