Striking contract faculty at York University who voted to accept the school’s latest offer have been told to re-vote following “irregularities” in the Wednesday night tally, adding another layer of chaos to the months of labour disruption.“The YES side won, but there were significant discrepancies in their vote count that may or may not have reversed the result,” Julian Arend, vice-president of CUPE Local 3903, Unit 2, said Thursday.The discrepancies called into question one in seven ballots, he said.As a result, parent union CUPE National made the unusual decision to nullify the vote and start over again, he said. The re-vote was to begin Thursday evening and continue on Friday afternoon.That means about 3,000 contract faculty, teaching assistants and graduate assistants are still off the job in a dispute that has caused anxiety and confusion for many of York’s 50,000 students.If ratified, the roughly 1,100 contract faculty represented by Unit 2 of the local would be back at work on Monday. However, the other two striking units, representing about 1,900 teaching assistants and 130 graduate assistants, have no plans to vote on the latest offer and would remain on picket lines.Arend said in an email he has never seen a situation like the re-vote called for by Local 3903’s parent union.“Of course when the discrepancies account for one in seven ballots, there’s obviously a problem.”A statement posted on the CUPE 3903 website Thursday said the number of ballots cast at the ratification vote did not match the number of signatures of eligible voters.“The number of irregularities is such that it is impossible to account for the results of the vote with absolute certainty,” it said.Read more:Doug Ford will recall legislature to end York strike, cut gas prices Editorial | York University students take priority over politicsArbitration is the only answer to ‘clash’ in York U strike, says l ...
|
