The campus safety strike has shown both the union and university are willing to ignore student safety and appeal to student insecurities to further their separate interests.
This tug-of-war ignores the most powerful force on campus—the collective student wallet. Students provide Carleton with over half of its operating income, and as such we need a place at the bargaining table.
The Carleton University Students’ Association, the Graduate Students’ Association, and the Rideau River Residence Association should be entitled to see what happens at bargaining, ask questions, and relay information to their members. Student representatives don’t need to argue salary, benefits, or working hours—but they need a presence.
The rhetoric from administration and the unions should be replaced by our student representatives’ unfiltered accounts of how our money, time, and safety are being handled.
Carleton and its unions need to be reminded of whose money they’re playing with, and who suffers the most when things go sour, like they have now.
For example, replacement officers do not appear properly trained. They had their residence tour no earlier than the first night of the strike. A student claims to have waited an unacceptable amount of time to receive service during an emergency. Another report claims some picketers are warning women, through megaphones, they are at a higher risk of sexual assault while regular safety workers are striking.
If student interests are in mind, as Carleton and the unions maintain, they should open the bargaining room doors.
