Student Hardship and Support for a Faculty Strike

From March 20 to May 13, 1997, faculty and librarians at York University in Toronto, Canada, went on a strike. In order to assess the academic and economic impact of the strike on students, two telephone surveys were carried out with a panel of undergraduate students in the fifth and sixth weeks of the strike and in October 1997, five months after the end of the strike. The surveys confirm that students faced academic and economic hardship both during and after the strike. Moreover, in both surveys, only a minority of students supported the strike. A regression analysis shows, however, that academic and economic hardship explain little of the variance in support for the strike. By contrast, attitudes toward unions in general are the best predictor of support.