"I spent seven hours on the picket line yesterday, and I feel that I must share with you a few things about this whole strike situation:
1) None of us out there likes the idea of freezing on the roadside.
2) Spending time as street walkers isn't what we dreamt of the night after we defended our PhDs. We all feel displaced and would much rather be in our classrooms.
3) We teach because we want to share our passion with you, not because it is lucrative. If we wanted to be rich, we would have chosen a different career.
4) Also, the nature of our work is such that it never ends. Even though we are paid part-time, we spend most of our waking time thinking about our classes. No class is like another; no lecture is identical to the one last term. One of my colleagues told me it takes him at least six hours to prepare one fifty-minute lecture, and this is normal.
5) Quite apart from the lecture preparation, we also spend a lot of time just getting to Laurier every time we have a class. As part-timers, we don't know if we would be re-hired next term, so it doesn't make much sense to uproot our families and move to Waterloo. As well, many of us have other jobs at other locations in Ontario. I commute from Toronto three times a week; I take Greyhound because it is cheaper than driving and it also allows me to mark papers or prepare classes while getting there; on my teaching days, I spend six hours just traveling to and from Laurier. I meet a number of my colleagues on the coach: to be there, we all get up at 5 am after only 3 to 4 hours of sleep. I assure you: this does take some commitment. And no, Laurier doesn't pay for our commute or even for the GRT.
6) You ever wondered how your part-time profs earn money during the summer? Better not ask: PhDs serving tables at Wendy's is by far not the worst scenario.
7) Lastly, don't think that strike only impacts students. We lose our April salary, all of it. We also jeopardize our chances of being re-hired next year.
As far as I am concerned, strike pay is not even going to cover my daycare expenses, which is why I can only afford to picket once a week, doing two shifts back to back. Which brings me back to point one. I do not like being cold. I do not like being called a full-time whiner. I do not strike because I don't feel like teaching. I did count on the April money, especially so because I will have no income over the summer. But I do support the strike because, regardless of whether I am re-hired next term or not, my colleagues are wonderfully warm, knowledgeable, hard-working people who deserve to be treated as professionals rather than casual workers and who depend on their wages to feed their children, so job security is probably as important for them as fair wages. "Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise."
Why do I write all this? Because I had a chance yesterday to see that many, if not most of you, understand and support us, even if you do not know all the details. Yes, there were some students who turned away from us, or even muttered insults, but they were only few. I cannot start telling you how heart-warming it was when you honked, or shoved hot coffee into our stiff hands, or dropped off steaming pizzas, tomato soup, or home-made cookies. Or simply walked the line with us for half an hour. This means a lot to us, and for all this I want to tell you my sincere, heartfelt THANK YOU!"
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