MONTREAL - McGill was tossed into chaos Thursday as a strike involving 1,700 staffers made life difficult for students on their first day of class.

Routine tasks such as sending an email became a difficult undertaking.

"I was trying to email someone and it just said that I couldn't email them. The automatic reply came back that I couldn't email them because of this disruption," noted student Yasha Ahmed.

Another student won't be doing much reading tonight, as the bookstore was flooded with students seeking books.

"The line wraps around the whole bookstore," said student Jeremy Anderson. "I literally picked up my books, walked over to the line, realized that I'd miss my class and put my books back down."

The support staff workers started picketing in front of the university on Sherbrooke St. starting at 7 a.m., many toting cups of coffee to fuel an effort they hadn't tried in recent memory.

"I've been at McGill since 1976, and we've never had anything like this," said Linda Drodge, a legal secretary at McGill.

They are on the hunt for better pay and benefits.

"The benefits and the pension are not what they used to be and not what they should be," said lab technician Lisa Danielczak.

The university has offered the workers a 1.2 percent wage increase over three years but the workers are looking at over twice that, which they claim would put their wages in line with counterparts from other universities.

"We'd like to see a three percent with a progression, and allow the workers to work up to those scales," said union president Kevin Whittaker. "I think the university is going to understand very shortly that it needs these 1700 workers."

But the brass does not appear ready to bend.

"It deals with the financial constraints that we are under right now. The Quebec government has made it very clear to us that it expects us to abide by its government salary policy for public sector employees, and that's what we're doing," said Michael Di Grappa, VP Administration and Finance.

The negotiations started last December and support staff have not have a contract since January. The union has asked the provincial labour ministry to mediate a settlement. 

The strike could inconvenience McGill students, many of whom rely on the workers to get help in various ways, ranging from navigating the bureaucracy to simply getting photocopies.