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McGill University’s law professors suspended their strike late Monday after reaching a tentative agreement with the school.
“McGill and AMPL have agreed to suspend the strike until the next meeting with the arbitrator on Oct. 8,” said a message to law students sent Tuesday morning on behalf of McGill and the Association of McGill Professors of Law.
“During this period, the parties will work towards finding a federated approach between various professors’ unions to negotiate collective agreements with the university.”
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Classes will resume “no later than” Thursday, the message added.
In the 2022-23 academic year, there were just under 700 students in the law faculty.
The suspension follows five weeks of striking, which had delayed the start of the semester. The approximately 40-member union began strike action in late April after negotiating their first collective agreement at the end of 2022. The strike was paused over the summer to ensure grading was completed, but resumed on Aug. 26, with professors demanding McGill drop its legal challenge to decertify their union.
On Monday, it seemed that negotiations were at a deadlock, with McGill warning law students that courses taught by union members could be cancelled unless the strike ended.
But then AMPL suspended its strike, announcing Tuesday that the union and McGill agreed to a “process” that could see the university align with other Quebec institutions in recognizing faculty unions under collective agreements.
The union added that students would return to class “without any loss of credits or delay.”
AMPL president Evan Fox-Decent struck an optimistic note on Tuesday.
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“This is a win for everyone at McGill. Through our first collective agreement, we will set a pattern that will serve all McGill professors, students and staff into the future.”
Central to the negotiations, according to AMPL, is the recognition of the law faculty’s union and the other faculty unions, including the Association of McGill Professors of Education (AMPE) and the Association of McGill Professors of the Faculty of Arts (AMPFA).
“McGill will need to agree to a federated structure that the unions present for the strike to end permanently,” AMPL wrote.
But in a statement on Tuesday, McGill clarified that the university’s challenge to AMPL “is not about opposing the unionization of professors,” and emphasized that in Quebec, “it is recognized that employees with a community of interests will generally be part of the same bargaining unit.”
The university stated: “A ‘federated’ system involving AMPL and the two nascent associations, from the faculty of education and the faculty of arts, would avoid a situation whereby different groups of professors, one as small as 42 in the case of AMPL, would negotiate collective agreements independently.
“Such a scenario could lead to a multitude of independent unions representing professors at the university and would create a Kafkaesque situation.”
The university says it is advocating for a system similar to that in place for McGill’s course lecturers, where a single university-wide bargaining unit negotiates collective agreements.
“Establishing such a system for professors would enable unions to bargain together with McGill while also including separate clauses dealing with the unique characteristics of some faculties.”
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