As MUN faculty strike continues, other staff conflicted about crossing picket lines for work
While hundreds of Memorial University's faculty members remain on strike and many classes have been cancelled, some other university employees are feeling conflicted about having to cross the picket lines each day because they're still required to go to work.
Alison Coffin, a member of the Lecturers' Union of Memorial University of Newfoundland and an economics teacher, is doing just that.
"[The strike] is causing a huge amount of confusion, an additional level of stress," Coffin said Tuesday, noting some classes are going ahead and some aren't.
"We have to answer lots of questions from students that we don't have the answers to."
Coffin's union isn't tied up in the labour dispute between the Memorial University of Newfoundland Faculty Association and the institution, so those instructors are still teaching their courses.
Coffin calls the situation a moral dilemma, in that members of her union have to cross a picket line of members of another union — many of whom are also instructors — fighting for benefits that will improve the lives of their own union's members.
"We all don't want to cross the picket line, but we're in a situation where our employment contract says that we must continue to provide service," she said.
"So the legality of it all could lead us to a position of if we chose not to cross then we could be disciplined for that. So we are telling our members to report to work as per the terms and conditions of our employment contract and our collective agreement."
Tenure track instructors represented by the faculty association have a research component to their positions or teach more than two courses a semester. Lecturers' union members are responsible for teaching two or fewer courses a semester.
Coffin said that means they're considered part-time employees.
"We do not get benefits, we get very short-term contracts. It's the most precarious teaching position at the university," she said.
The lecturers' union contract expired in August 2020 said Coffin, and the union hasn't been to the bargaining table yet.
She said university administration has yet to set a bargaining date.
Other unions on campus
Members of the Newfoundland and Labrador Association of Public and Private Employees — about 500 custodians, campus enforcement officers, food service workers and maintenance staff — also have to cross the picket line.
"There's hundreds of students who actually live on the campus. So the food service workers that we represent, they provide a critical service," said union president Jerry Earle.
Earle said NAPE would not direct its members to not report to work but some have hung signs stating the union's support of the job action.
Faculty associatio president Ash Hossain said Monday his union won't prevent students or members of other unions from crossing.
