The threat of a strike at Ontario's community colleges has been "narrowly averted" according to OPSEU, which represents faculty.
Instead, the union will focus on "root causes" of the problems in the system.
"After more than six months of negotiations, the bargaining team representing over 15,000 college faculty across Ontario signed a Memorandum of Agreement with significant benefit gains – particularly for their most precarious members, making up 75 per cent of the workforce," says a news release.
"While the two sides otherwise remain at an impasse, the parties have agreed to send all outstanding items to mediation-arbitration. As a result, Ontario’s 24 public colleges will narrowly avoid a strike this term."
The union was in a legal strike position this past Saturday and had threatened "job action" including a strike starting tomorrow.
“Faculty working conditions are student learning conditions, and with a historic strike mandate and province-wide organizing, faculty sent the clear message that we’re ready to stand up to protect both,” said Ravi Ramkissoonsingh, Chair of the faculty bargaining team.
OPSEU, the union representing college faculty, and the College Employer Council (CEC), the bargaining agent for Ontario’s 24 public colleges, met in downtown Toronto on January 6 and 7 in mediation. A new contract for college faculty will be ruled on at a further date by Arbitrator William Kaplan.
“We are pleased to have averted an unnecessary strike at Ontario’s 24 public Colleges,” said Graham Lloyd, CEO, of CEC. “Our goal throughout negotiations has been to recognize the hard work of academic employees and to keep students in class. To this end, CEC offered several breakthrough proposals such as enhanced benefits for all academic employees and improved access to benefits for partial-load employees. Throughout the bargaining process, CEC has put students first. The threat against their learning has been averted. Both OPSEU and CEC reached an agreement to arbitrate by finding compromises on many of the outstanding demands”.
As cuts to programming and frontline staff are announced at college after college on the coattails of federal restrictions to international student visas, the union says that faculty’s fight to save the colleges isn’t over – and it won’t be limited to the bargaining table according to the release.
“College students are reduced to walking dollar signs for the same reason that 75 per cent of faculty are precarious, working contract-to-contract,” said JP Hornick, President of OPSEU. “It’s a corporate model of education that funnels student tuition away from their education and towards the ballooning salaries of ever-multiplying college administrators who will never step foot in the classroom, or vanity projects to attract investors."
Key issues include work conditions, job security and quality of education.
The College Employer Council says classes will continue as scheduled this week.
"In the prelude to an anticipated provincial election, all eyes are on Doug Ford for his starring role in manufacturing the crisis in our colleges. A 2021 report by the Auditor General determined that the Ministry of Colleges and Universities had 'not developed a strategic plan for the sector to help mitigate the risk of a sudden decline in international students and the impact it could have on the college sector, students and government.'"
“This is the end game of Ford’s two-step agenda: starve our public colleges of public funds and engineer a dependency on revenues from international students, who are faced with price-gouged tuition rates and Ontario’s affordability crisis on arrival,” pointed out Hornick. “And when the plan goes belly-up, get workers and students to eat the cost.”
“The same government that proudly declares that every $1 invested in post-secondary education has a $1.36 return for Ontarians, has put Ontario dead last amongst the provinces for per-student funding,” added Hornick. “It’s not just illogical, it’s irresponsible – Ford is gambling away Ontario’s future. It’s time we bet on a better future for our colleges; one that’s not rigged against students from the outset.”
“It was important to us to provide stability to students at the start of their semester,” said Dr. Laurie Rancourt, Chair of the Management Bargaining team. “We are encouraged that OPSEU has prioritized students by agreeing to binding arbitration.”
