TORONTO — Faculty at Ontario's 24 public colleges are ready to hit the picket lines this Friday.
The Ontario Public Services Employees Union says 16,000 faculty members will go on strike at 12:01 a.m. on March 18 unless the College Employer Council agrees to voluntary binding interest arbitration.
The parties have failed to settle on terms for a new collective agreement during months of negotiations that started last year.
Most recently, OPSEU members rejected the CEC's last contract offer in a vote supervised by the Ministry of Labour last month.
Faculty have been working to rule since December.
The union and the council have both posted their positions online.
OPSEU says binding interest arbitration allows both parties to submit proposals to a neutral arbitrator, who in effect chooses a compromise from the two submissions.
However, the CEO of the College Employer Council, Graham Lloyd, has stated "We are not prepared to have an arbitrator 'split the difference' on key issues that ...are unacceptable to begin with. In essence, there is nothing to split."
The CEC has instead proposed a different form of arbitration in which the arbitrator is allowed to make a final binding choice between one of the proposals in its entirety.
OPSEU President Warren Thomas said in a statement Monday that he believes a deal can still be reached without the need for "a messy strike."
Earlier this month, Ontario college student associations sent a letter to both parties, and to the Ministry of Colleges and Universities, expressing fear over a repeat of the 2017 strike "which left students feeling that the culminating weeks of their year were rushed and incomplete."
The student groups said this left graduates feeling unprepared for the work force.
They asked the parties to find a solution to the deadlock before classroom instruction is impacted.
