Thursday, February 4th 2010

By unknown

DANIELLE WEBB

CUP ONTARIO BUREAU CHIEF

There are about 500,000 full-time and part-time college students in Ont.

57 per cent of college faculty voted in favour of a strike mandate on Jan. 13.

OPSEU has set a strike deadline for Feb. 11 if agreement is not reached.

Ontario’s college teachers have set a Feb. 11 strike deadline. If the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU), representing Ontario’s 9,000 college teachers, have not reached an agreement with Colleges Ontario by that date, the union’s leaders say they are ready to strike.

“We do not see further votes at this time as being productive,” Ted Montgomery, chair of the OPSEU bargaining team, announced at a press conference on Feb. 1.

“In order to bring to an end the continuing uncertainty, the union will be setting a strike deadline,” he told reporters at OPSEU’s head office in Toronto.

Montgomery did say that the possibility of continued negotiations before the strike deadline was not off the table, though. “The union is offering the colleges the opportunity to prevent a strike this time. The students, faculty and colleges all want this resolved.”

To avoid a strike, the union is prepared to enter into binding arbitration if the colleges agree to that route — “The ball is in their court on arbitration,” he said. Montgomery also said that he does not see the impending strike as a labour relations issue, but as a means of ensuring access to quality education in Ontario. “The focus should not be on labour relations, but on the quality of education college students receive now and in the future. That is our focus today.”

Unresolved issues include a salary increase of 5.9 per cent over three years and the protection of academic freedoms. But on those points, he indicated that there was still a great gap between the union’s demands and what the colleges seemed ready to offer.

“We’re just too far apart, and we can’t get the employer to respond in any positive way to our position.”

On Jan. 29, the union rejected the college’s final offer and refused to bring it to the membership for a vote.

At that time, Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty urged both sides to continue negotiating. “I would encourage both sides to act responsibly, to do everything that they possibly can to come together and stay together and find a way to resolve this in a way that doesn’t compromise education or interfere with students’ learning,” the premier told reporters.

College faculty voted 57 per cent in favour of a strike mandate on Jan. 13. Montgomery doesn’t believe that the slim majority will make any potential strike less effective.

“The majority is clear enough. We don’t believe the colleges can operate in the way that they need to operate, even if the faculty cross the picket lines,” he said. “You can’t simply slow down the teaching and graduating of students.”

A strike would affect approximately 500,000 full- and part-time college students across the province.

Tags: College, college strike, Ontario, OPSEU, Strike, Ted Montgomery