Faculty members across Ontario have given their union (the Ontario Public Sector Employees Union/ OPSEU) a strike mandate, as talks continue in an attempt to avert a work stoppage at the provincie’s two dozen colleges – including St. Clair.
Sixty-eight percent of professors voted in favour of a strike-authorization vote to enforce their contract demands during ballot-casting on September 14.
Contract bargaining between OPSEU and the College Employer Council (“the Council”/“management”) is scheduled to resume next week.
PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED BACKGROUND INFO
The current contract with approximately 12,000 professors is set to expire on September 30.
Summer-time talks between the two sides soured after just a few days of negotiations, leading OPSEU to request the appointment of a provincial conciliator to assist with the process.
One of OPSEU’s chief proposals was summarily rejected by the Council at the outset of the talks.
The union was proposing that the “oversight system” at all colleges should be revised to a university-like configuration: with a Board of Governors (composed of college and community officials) managing financial and operational matters, while a Senate (made up strictly of college administrators and employees) would deal with all academic issues.
Currently, Boards of Governors have decision-making responsibility for all of those topics.
The only college that currently features a Senate-like, “collegial governance” component for academic issues is Sheridan in the Greater Toronto Area.
The Council does not, necessarily, reject the value of the Senate idea … But it argues that it has nothing to do with terms-and-conditions of employment, so it cannot be incorporated into – or implemented by – the new contract with OPSEU.
It further notes that each of the 24 colleges is a separate corporation, so each would have to decide how to configure its administrative/oversight structure, with addition regulatory input from the Ministry of Advanced Education and Skills Development.
In late-August, the Council published its contract offer.
Such matters are usually kept confidential … But, in a press release, the Council stated that it was publicizing the details of its offers because the union had not “provided any information to its members about the 7.5 percent increase (over the four-year term of the proposed contract), the new maximum (salary) of $115,094, and other benefits with no concessions. We felt it very important to get the information out to faculty.”
The Council also urged that OPSEU should allow a full-membership vote on that offer prior to conducting a strike vote. The union rejected that idea.
If talks during the next few weeks do not resolve the impasse, prior to the expiration of the existing contract on September 30, the union would in a legal strike position by mid- to late-October.
