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On Tuesday morning at Queen’s Park, Minister of Advanced Education and Skills Development Mitzie Hunter implored her fellow MPPs to “think of York students” in considering back-to-work legislation that would have ended the university’s fourth strike in 18 years. The Liberal government needed unanimous consent of the legislature to ram it through and, thanks to the New Democrats, they didn’t get it.

Now this thing will almost certainly drag on at least until after the June 6 election — making it York’s longest strike ever — and perhaps considerably further. The legislature didn’t sit for six weeks after Dalton McGuinty took office in 2003; not for 16 weeks after Mike Harris took over in 1995.

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The striking union — the only one representing York employees to strike since 1997 — is CUPE 3903, representing the university’s contract faculty, graduate assistants and teaching assistants. It says it wants to bargain. The administration wants binding arbitration. Neither side disputes that York employees enjoy wages and benefits at or near the best in the sector. But as Industrial Inquiry Commissioner William Kaplan reported last week, their positions on contract faculty are so far apart as to make negotiation implausible.