The ongoing PSAC 901, Unit 1 strike has professors swapping lecture halls for picket lines.
After graduate student workers walked off the job on March 10 without a renewed Collective Agreement, some professors are using the strike as a teaching opportunity. Instead of traditional class time, students are taking field trips to the picket lines—gathering firsthand insight into academic labour rights, advocacy, and their own futures, while standing in solidarity with the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) 901, Unit 1.
Instead of cancelling class, instructors from courses including POLS 212: Canadian Politics and HLTH 495: Advanced Topics in Health Studies II have opted to take their students to University Ave. and Union St., with the goal of providing undergrads with firsthand exposure to the daily protests. Mary Louise Adams, professor in the School of Kinesiology and Health Studies and HLTH 495 instructor, views the strike as a meaningful learning opportunity.
READ MORE: After four days on the picket line, graduate student workers maintain strong momentum
“I thought it was a really good educational experience for the students in my course […] and it fits into the course content that we’re talking about, which is about social change,” Adams said. “I want [students] to learn more about how strikes work, how the labour movement works, but I also want them to see that a picket line is made up of people who are really trying to work together to improve the conditions of their work.”
Adams has seen the strike’s impact firsthand, particularly the stress among fourth-year students hoping to graduate this year. She blames this pressure on the University’s lack of action returning to the bargaining table.
“The University is willing to put all the students and all the staff and all the faculty through this tremendous stress. And you know, they certainly could be working a lot harder to try and put the strike and all the stress to an end,” she said.
Claire Finlayson, ArtSci ’25, a fourth-year student on the cusp of graduation and one of Adams’ students, believes visiting the picket lines is highly beneficial.
“It teaches us firsthand of the political climate at Queen’s. It’s one thing hearing about the strike from an e-mail and a whole other story learning about it from the people who themselves are fighting the battle,” Finlayson said.
In an interview with The Journal, Caroline Dunton, a skelton-clark post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Political Studies and instructor of POLS 212 explained the importance of democratically creating change in education.
“Post-secondary education is a […] responsibility of the provincial government. So, something like a strike is a form of democratically influencing policy of the provincial government. It’s a way of putting pressure on the government outside the ballot box,” Dunton said.
Dunton believes undergraduate students need to understand what being a graduate student looks like prior to entering their graduate studies.
“As we see austerity across Ontario, across Canada, I want students to go into things eyes wide open. I don’t want them to get to graduate school and feel like they were duped by any university,” she said.
An open letter on the strike, originally released on March 12, from Queen’s faculty has since been signed by 160 Queen’s faculty, librarians, and archivists urging Principal Patrick Deane, Provost Matthew Evans, and the Board of Trustees to resume negotiations with PSAC 901.
Most recent negotiations took place on March 9 prior to the strike deadline of March 10 at 12:01 a.m., with the University offering a three per cent raise for the next year, then 2.25 per cent for the following two years.
The letter emphasized the struggles of graduate students at Queen’s living below the poverty line, highlighting the importance of returning to the bargaining table and ending the strike.
“We want our graders, tutorial leaders, and lab assistants back to work with a decent wage increase and adequate support. We want our undergraduate students to complete their term (or their degree) with fair and accurate assessment of their hard work,” the letter reads.
A group of faculty is organizing a march and teach-in on March 21, with some choosing to take a day of unpaid leave to stand in solidarity with PSAC 901, Unit 1. They demand the University return to negotiations and reach a fair resolution to prevent the strike from entering a third week. The march starts at 11:30 a.m. at the Yellow House and proceeds to Richardson Hall, followed by an outdoor teach-in.
Tags
Professors, PSAC 901, PSAC 901 Strike 2025, solidarity, strike
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