The CUPE 3912 labour dispute is the fallout from an inequitable distribution of resources within a two-tiered academic system. It is also an indictment of a two-tiered university professoriate which employs highly paid permanent faculty members while failing to increase pay for precariously employed sessional and temporary assistants and instructors.

If someone really wants to fight oppression from inside the ivory tower, it is imperative that she carefully examines what is happening below, and steers away from the narcissistic impulse to keep attention focused on the troubles faced by the top five percent income earners in the population. To put it simply, academics are not an oppressed class.