Satanic Capitalist

‘How Did We Become an Underclass in the University?’ | The Tyee

SFU’s striking teachers describe academia’s parallel universes, one lacking job security and pensions.

The Tyee

Prof. Amyn Sajoo was supposed to be teaching a class at Simon Fraser University about political resistance.

Instead, he was on a picket line.

Sajoo is one of 1,600 SFU teaching staff who have been on strike for more than a week after negotiations between the school and the Teaching Support Staff Union, or TSSU, broke down.

Teaching assistants and professors marched in a circle outside the school’s downtown Vancouver campus, yelling slogans and banging drumsticks against orange plastic Home Depot buckets.

Some on the picket line are graduate students struggling to make rent. Others are English teachers who have never had pensions. And some, like Sajoo, are nationally recognized scholars who have taught at SFU for years but have never had a permanent job. [...]