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Jodi Lundmark, tbnewswatch.com
Members of LUFA and supporters marched from the Oliver Road community centre to the steps of the LU Agora Monday to protest the unviersity's four-day shutdown.
Hundreds marched down Oliver Road to the steps outside Lakehead University’s Agora Monday to protest the institute’s decision to lock out its staff.
The university administration announced earlier this year that it would shut down Lakehead from Dec. 21 to 24 to save money, claiming they were in serious financial trouble. They are now in an arbitration battle with the Lakehead University Faculty Association.
LUFA president Joey Farrell said the shutdown has had a huge impact on the staff.
"One of the first things they did was try to shorten exams and try to get us to have all our marking and whatnot finished a week early, which was almost an impossible task," she said.
"The only way the professors can get it done is going to be to work during these days and work on our holidays between Christmas and New Year’s."
That leaves staff doing work on their own time over the shutdown days and not getting paid for that work, Farrell said.
"We still have classes to teach on Jan. 4," she said. "There are many who are still marking exams because there was no feasible way they could have had that finished by last week. It’s just there is no way this is four days that people are going to sit back and (say), ‘oh, great! We have nothing to do at work.’"
In addition to the local unions and community members who came out to the protest to show their support, more than 30 people came from across the country from as far east as Newfoundland to Saskatchewan in the west.
If Lakehead gets away with shutting down the school this week, it could set a dangerous precedent, said Jim Turk, executive director for the Canadian Association of University Teachers – an organization that represents faculty and academic staff from 122 of the country’s universities and colleges.
"It’s the most flagrant violation of collective agreements we’ve seen in this country," said Turk. "A number of universities are claiming they’re in financial trouble. No other university has acted unilaterally like Lakehead has. If Lakehead gets away with it, then it will be an action imitated by other universities across Canada."
Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations president Mark Langer said a precedent will be set but he’s confident it will be a positive one for faculty associations in the province.
"I’m convinced the management at Lakehead is going to fail in what they’re doing," he said. "I think the eventual outcome of this will be the management of this university will have squandered hundreds of thousands of dollars on legal action that will have no positive effect on giving this university what it’s after. I’m hoping this will be a negative example for other universities across the province."
Langer said there were other routes administration could have taken to save money. There are ways to re-open contracts or they could have taken the moral high road and held a fundraiser, appealed to the employees to donate.
"They chose to act in an arbitrary and I think ultimately unsuccessful manner," he said.
Farrell noted the four-day shutdown is especially felt in the faculty’s morale.
"We don’t work-to-rule," she said. "We’re not in that position but it makes you feel you should work-to-rule and that just depresses everybody and changes that atmosphere, so people are angry; they’re being disrespected."