On September 11, following 21 days of fruitless negotiations, 23,000 workers began a strike against the College Employer Council (CEC). The workers are support staff employed at all 24 of Ontario's colleges working directly with students and behind the as IT workers, food suppliers, childcare centre workers, custodians, among many other roles.
At George Brown College, The North Star spoke with Mike Greenwood, a culinary technician, who said,“I'm part of the strike because the Ontario government is trying to break all the public service unions and take away the full-time union jobs and only employ part-timers.”
Concerns over job security were a major factor for the decision to strike. Government funding cuts have led to 10,000 job cuts in student service positions. Doug Ford's provincial government cut $400 million from the post-secondary education budget in 2024. According to the Ontario Public Service Employee Union (OPSEU), which represents the workers, post-secondary education has lost 30% of its provincial funding since 2013/2014.
Compared with other provinces, Ontario has the lowest funding for post-secondary education. Ontario spends less than half the amount per person under 45 as in B.C. and Alberta, and totals only 56% of the national funding average. The trend of layoffs, however, is not limited to Ontario's colleges. Government cuts to post-secondary education in B.C. have resulted in hundreds of college staff losing their jobs or their hours.
As governments have reduced funding for public education, colleges have been forced to rely on other funding sources, mainly depending on international students who pay about five times the tuition fees of domestic students. Recent caps to international student visas have directly impacted college finances.
With the strike entering its third week, solidarity on the picket lines is building steam. Despite that classes are still running, the workers are making their voices heard at the picket lines. At George Brown College, striking workers halted incoming deliveries, including school supplies and food deliveries, and cancelled childcare programs cancelled.
The CEC, which answers directly to the provincial government, reacted to the strike stating that workers' demands for job security are “unreasonable ‘poison pill’ demands.” The employer's representatives have meanwhile not made demands to the government for critically needed funds.
Earlier this year Ontario's colleges narrowly avoided a faculty strike. Fifteen thousand faculty workers of OPSEU-Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology rejected their employers' attempt to reduce benefits and increase work hours, especially for part-time workers.