MONTREAL - McGill's striking support staff members received some high-profile support Friday as they demonstrated near the university gates.

Brian Topp, leadership candidate for the federal NDP, along with Maude Barlow from the Council of Canadians gave speeches to rally the crowd of several hundred people.

Topp is a McGill graduate and says the administration needs to work out an agreement with employees.

"I dearly love the university," Topp said. "I know it's going to be just fine, and one of the ways it's going to be just fine is to do a reasonable settlement with these workers."

He was also asked by one reporter if, as a leadership candidate, he should be taking sides in a labour dispute.

"The New Democratic Party is a party that stands for the working people and we're friends of working people everywhere," he replied.

Striking support workers were careful to follow the terms of one of several injunctions limiting where they can strike, and on Friday morning the university was back in court seeking another limit.

A judge agreed that strikers should not be allowed to protest at the homes or workplaces of the school's administrators and members of the Board of Governors.

Two weeks ago strikers demonstrated outside the Westmount home of one member of the Board.

"With respect to the private residences, it will limit the number and set the distance - the minimum distance - at which the picketers must be away from the homes," said McGill vice-principal Michael Di Grappa.

Negotiations in the labour dispute are ongoing, with three more days of mediated talks scheduled for next week.

DiGrappa says McGill has been working hard to find a settlement, and that the order in which differences are being addressed was agreed to in advance.

"What MUNACA (the union) refers to as its core issues, it was agreed that those would be discussed at the end of the process when all the other non-monetary issues were resolved," he said.

McGill says the union's salary demands would amount to a 28 per cent wage increase over three years for three quarters of the employees, but MUNACA disputes that so many of its members would be eligible for such a raise under its proposal. It says it is seeking a three per cent annual increase along with additional amounts based on seniority, and more importantly that the pay scale be adjusted so it takes less time to reach the top pay scale.

Under the pay scale in the expired collective agreement, the union says it would take an employee 37 years to reach the top salary. The union is proposing that be cut down to six years so that it falls in line with other Montreal universities, where it takes anywhere from three to 14 years to reach the top of pay scale.

"They're only offering 1.2 per cent, which is not fair" said striking employee Vivian Lweigh-Durant. "I can't live like that."

With files from Canadian Press