McGill University has agreed to drop a legal challenge to its professors’ right to unionize, officially ending a strike that saw law professors walk out for more than five weeks this fall.
The university and the McGill Association of Law Professors (AMPD) have released a joint statement announcing a new path forward for negotiating faculty working conditions.
The union agreed to negotiate collective agreements jointly with two other nascent unions in the faculties of arts and education, which was one of the university’s main demands.
In exchange, McGill will end its judicial review of the law school’s union certification and stop challenging the certification of the other two unions.
Law professors suspended their strike and returned to class last week, but had threatened to walk out again if an agreement was not reached with the university.
The law professors’ union was accredited in November 2022 by the Administrative Labor Tribunal of Quebec, but it has not yet signed its first collective agreement.
“The memorandum of understanding places McGill in a good position to deal with the major problems it faces: the reduction in government funding, the decline in funds allocated to research, francization and the divisions caused by various local and global events” , said Evan Fox-Decent, professor of law at McGill and president of AMPD, in a press release.
“We now have a common understanding and a roadmap that will allow us to not only resolve these issues, but also ensure the success of McGill as a community,” he added.