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College Professors, Librarians, and other faculty narrowly avoided cancelling class and forming pickets on Thursday. The Ontario Public Service Employees Union-Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology (OPSEU-CAAT), representing 15,000 college faculty, and the College Employer Council of Ontario (CEC) signed a memorandum of agreement (MOA) to enter binding arbitration.
In their bargaining update, OPSEU addressed college workers, “It was your work, day in and day out, flexing our collective power to exercise a historic strike mandate.” The strike mandate passed at 79%, supporting labour action, with 76% of faculty voting in the mandate.
The last-minute agreement was a product of a two-day round of bargaining that saw the CEC retracting several concessions that it sought to impose upon college faculty. These concessions sought to restrict access to benefits for part-time staff, increase the length of the school year from 10 to 12 months, and increase work hours without faculty consent, amongst other impositions.
Further gains in the memorandum include extensions to both full-time and part-time benefits starting May 1st. Full-time staff saw an increase to 75% coverage on vision and hearing plans, while part-time staff saw an increase to 25% for vision, hearing, and dental coverage.
OPSEU-CAAT announced on Friday, January 3 that faculty could have been on strike as early as the following Thursday—a time when students were just returning from holiday break.
In addition to the proposed concessions, other major motivations to strike included the widespread practice of unpaid labour for class preparation, marking, and mentoring, and replacement of full-time positions with part-time staff.
Ontario colleges have proclaimed a “funding crisis” as the federal Liberal government began restricting international student enrolment. Inflated international tuition fees have become a cash-cow for post-secondary institutions. OPSEU has stated “the CEC and the Colleges see this crisis as an opportunity to penny-pinch, to justify their refusal to invest, to deny workers contract improvements and better wages, and to threaten austerity when we are the ones that generate value for the colleges, bringing students’ learning to life”.
The MOA outlines that binding arbitration must end by June 30, 2025. Except for the improved benefits being implemented on May 1 of this year, the previous collective agreement will remain in effect until the new agreement is ratified.