McGill picks scabs

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by Craig Segal

McGill students just got one step closer to a winter of icy sidewalks and filthy bathrooms as the 300 workers who maintain the university are on the brink of a strike.

After several years of contract negotiations with the administration, McGill's Service Employees Union recently voted to support a strike if ongoing talks continue to falter. The Union is angry that temporary employees earn only 70 per cent of the salary of regulars. They also want better contracts so the university can't pay them less than Quebec pays its civil servants.

A McGill administrator says wages must be kept down to compensate for excessive absenteeism. "We need casuals to fill the jobs of regulars," says Robert Savoie, executive director of Human Resources. Savoie calls the 20 per cent absentee rate "extremely high."

But a union rep questions Savoie's statistics. "At every meeting we ask for the absentee data and he never gives it to us," says Christina Cabral, who says the workers simply want to earn as much as their counterparts from the other local universities.

"With us, casuals get paid the same as regulars," says Ronald Cloutier, of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, which represents 8,000 service employees at a dozen other Quebec universities. "And we don't make less than Quebec civil servants."

While Cabral says it will be "hard" for McGill to function during a strike, Savoie is nonplussed. "We are allowed under the labour code to use other university employees to fill in their positions." :

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