THUNDER BAY — Faculty members at Confederation College are joining their counterparts across the province in a strike mandate vote.
Virtual polls for full-time and part-time professors, instructors, counsellors and librarians opened Tuesday afternoon and will be available until Thursday at 3:00 pm.
The bargaining team for the Ontario Public Service Employees Union is seeking a strike mandate as it continues negotiations with the College Employer Council, representing 24 colleges, on a new collective agreement to replace the one that expired at the end of September.
Talks began in July, but OPSEU alleges that "hopes of reaching an on-time, renewal agreement have been undercut by numerous concessions proposed by the employer."
The union also claims the colleges are in a period of historic profits.
"Those funds should be readily invested in quality education," said Michelle Arbour, acting chair of the faculty bargaining team. "Instead, we're seeing precarity on the rise as partial-load faculty hiring outpaces full-time faculty hiring."
She said three-quarters of teachers, counsellors and librarians are on short-term contracts with little to no benefits or job security.
But the colleges' administration is advising members of the union to make an informed choice by familiarizing themselves with both parties' proposals.
"CEC's proposals provide breakthrough improvements to the working conditions...and addresses, in a reasonable and balanced way, the key demands that [OPSEU] brought to the bargaining table," the employer council said in a published message.
The colleges' statement adds "The students and college system do not need a strike" to address these demands, and that "strike votes lead to strikes."
The vote is being conducted online by the Ontario Labour Relations Board.
