Ontario College faculty and staff threatened to strike. Here are the latest updates

Ontario College professors, instructors and other academic staff are threatening to strike as early as Friday if their demands are not met.

The prospect of a provincial strike in the colleges of Ontario has been dragging on for months. Contract negotiations between Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU) and College Employers Council (CEC) began in July, and college staff have been working without a collective agreement since September. Negotiations were held in November, and in February OPSEU rejected the CEC’s latest offer.

Who would strike?

More than 16,000 professors, instructors, librarians and other academic staff in the 24 public colleges of Ontario could strike from Friday at 12.01 p.m. A full-time job would put some 250,000 students in schools like Niagara College, St. Louis and more. Lawrence, Humber influenced, Seneca, Fanshawe, Centennial, George Brown and Durham. Employees who are not involved in the work stoppage include part-time and session faculty, support staff, and administrative staff such as deans, managers, and executive assistants.

How would a strike affect students?

In the event of a strike, all personal and online full-time program classes will be suspended. Some continuous learning courses may continue to run, so students should check directly with their college for updates. Students should also confirm the status of teaching positions, co-op placements and other jobs.

Student unions said students were disappointed to be “caught in the middle of these negotiations” and worried that their education would suffer. In an open letter signed by 15 student unions, the groups expressed fear that they would “see a repeat of the 2017 strike, which left students feeling that the culminating weeks of their year were fast and incomplete. . “

That year, the Ontario government ended a five-week college strike by enacting back-to-work legislation. It was the first time in the 50-year history of Ontario colleges that conspicuous faculty were forced back into the classroom.

What are the main issues in the strike?

The key issues for the union are the workload of the instructor, the faculty development and better job security and benefits for part-time faculty. Because of Bill 124, which limits wage increases in the public sector for the next three years to 1 percent a year, the union is not negotiating any additional compensation.

Meanwhile, the colleges say that the specific demands of the union can not be met because they violate the bill 124.

What are the latest updates?

OPSEU and the CEC are set to meet again today. OPSEU says that if progress is made, it intends to extend the strike deadline. If the colleges do not agree to a binding interest rate arbitration, the unions will strike on Friday.

The CEC says it will agree to accept arbitration for the final bid, allowing an arbitrator to easily choose between one final bid or the other. “By insisting on arbitrators’ interest in concluding this round of negotiations, the union has refused to acknowledge that the colleges have asked for nothing and have already agreed to many of the union’s demands,” the CEC said in a statement this week. “We have not lost sight of the fact that by saying that it will accept the interest of arbitrators, OPSEU is prepared to accept compromise if it is forced to, but does not want to propose anything on its own initiative.”

Who are the key figures?

• The Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU), which represents professors, instructors, librarians and consultants
• The College Employer Council (CEC), the bargaining unit representing Ontario’s publicly funded colleges
• Ontario’s Minister of Colleges and Universities, Jill Dunlop

On Tuesday, Ms Dunlop said: “Students can not afford a strike at the moment. They are finally back in the classroom, and there they must be.

If there is a strike, what happens to the already disrupted academic year?

Postsecondary students faced two years of pandemic disruption: abrupt changes to online learning, canceled extracurriculars, and the loss of social connections with their peers. After a year of online learning in the 2020-2021 academic year, many college students are back in personal classes just this past winter semester, in 2022. When a strike occurs, colleges may decide to compress course material or class time, or the extension winter semester.

After the 2017 strike, most colleges extended the winter term, and some added another week to the next spring semester to compensate for the time wasted during the labor dispute to delay completion. Ten percent of full-time students have withdrawn from their courses, with many believing that it would be better to try and re-enroll in their programs rather than drop their grades. Students who withdrew could receive tuition reimbursements and could also apply for as much as $ 500 in scholarships to cover additional housing or travel expenses.

With files from the Canadian press

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