A strike at Ontario's community colleges is looming as the faculty bargaining team requested a “no board” report Thursday.
Once the no board report is issued from the Ministry of Labour, a 16-day countdown begins toward a strike or lockout.
OPSEU says no real progress has been made with the College Employer Council (CEC) which represents management.
“Our college system is crumbling — we can’t sit back and let its failed stewards bulldoze education,” said Michelle Arbour, acting chair of the faculty bargaining team. “Our basic demands are an antidote, aimed at protecting the core mandate of the Colleges as places of education, not cash-grabs.
“Record profits and runaway administrative bloat – that’s the last decade of Ontario’s colleges in a nutshell,” added Arbour, who has worked as contract and full-time faculty in the Ontario college system since 2012. “We’ve added three times more managers to the system than full-time faculty. Meanwhile, half of our members work contract to contract, with little to no benefits.”
The Union headed into mediation with the CEC from Dec. 6 to 8, however, mediation was unsuccessful.
See: College faculty authorize strike mandate with 79% 'yes' vote
The Union says it is clear that without the urgency of labour action, the employer will not move off proposed contract language that will erode working conditions, job security, and quality of education.
“The heads of the college system and corporate-friendly politicians have manufactured the present crisis, setting up our college system like a house of cards,” said OPSEU President JP Hornick, faculty at George Brown College. “Now, that house is collapsing, and it appears the only contingency plan was austerity.”
But the CEC says it is "shocked" by the escalation by OPSEU by asking for a no board report.
"The College Employer Council entered mediation earlier this week with OPSEU, representing full-time and partial-load professors, instructors, and librarians. At the end of the three days, both parties agreed to extend mediation and meet again on January 6-7, 2025," it says in a news release.
“A strike at Ontario’s Colleges is wholly unnecessary and causes uncertainty, and disruption for students and faculty in a time of financial instability,” said Graham Lloyd, CEO of CEC. “Throughout this bargaining process, our goal has remained the same: We want to keep our students learning and faculty in the classroom. That is why we initially proposed binding arbitration and continue to urge OPSEU to agree. We do not know why they would prefer to disrupt student learning.”
Dr. Laurie Rancourt, Chair of the management bargaining team. calls the union action "deeply disappointing, especially at a time when students are busy studying for exams.”
She says the union is making demands it knows the colleges can never agree to, such as reducing their class time by 25 per cent, to less than 9 hours per week.
"OPSEU’s demands represent vast reductions in classroom teaching time and a maximum of 29 weeks of available teaching time in a year. Less teaching time doesn’t improve student success. OPSEU’s last offer of settlement amounts to more than $1 billion in new annual costs which represents an increase of more than 55% of total academic costs to the Colleges."
"We cannot accept terms that would jeopardize our students, faculty, and the future of the sector," adds a CEC news release.
Read the CEC position here.
But the union counters by saying, according to the Ministry of Colleges and Universities, every $1 invested in postsecondary education generates return-on-investment at roughly $1.36.
"While a substantial cash injection is long overdue by the province after decades of underfunding, the real-time dismantling of the college system in the interim raises the grave question: what will Ontarians have left after this race to the bottom?"
“There are no colleges without faculty,” added Hornick. “If we’re going to save the system, we need frontline workers setting the agenda, not footing the bill.”
The parties will meet once more for non-binding mediation between Jan. 6 and 7.
