TORONTO — Ontario's colleges say OPSEU's decision to call a strike by academic staff on Mar. 18 is short-sighted and comes at the expense of students and the college system.
The union announced Monday that professors, instructors, librarians and counsellors will stage a full walk-out starting Friday unless the College Employer Council agrees to binding interest arbitration of the remaining issues.
Binding interest arbitration would allow a neutral person to impose a compromise between the two parties' positions.
That's a non-starter for the CEC, which insists on final offer selection arbitration, under which the arbitrator would choose one of the proposals in its entirety.
"If the union is satisfied that its offer is reasonable, then it should allow an arbitrator to choose between it and the CEC offer," said Graham Lloyd, the CEO of the College Employer Council.
Workload-related issues, and job security for part-time faculty, are among the matters still in dispute.
According to the CEC, the union's workload demands would violate provincial law governing compensation, and are therefore unrealistic.
"We have consistently stated since July that the remaining union demands could never be accepted," Lloyd said.
OPSEU President Warren Thomas said Monday the union believes a deal can still be reached without "a messy strike."
JP Hornick, chair of the union bargaining team, said "Our members are fighting for the best education for students. We haven't made any unreasonable demands, and everything we have asked for is easily achievable."
The parties haven't sat down at the bargaining table since November.
Union members rejected the CEC's last offer in a vote supervised by the Ministry of Labour last month.
When college faculty went on strike in 2017, they were off for five weeks before the province passed back-to-work legislation.
The CEC says it asked the union last year to extend the current agreement with no changes so that the school year could be completed without interruption, but the offer was turned down without discussion.
