The union representing faculty at the province’s 24 colleges has issued a five-day strike notice ahead of upcoming mediation talks, leaving students unsure of what to expect in the upcoming semester.
“It’s just frustrating, it’s hard, you don’t know what’s happening, you don’t have control of your own education,” says Nicolas Etler, a student at Georgian College.
OPSEU issued a five-day strike notice Friday, ahead of planned negotiations this coming Monday and Tuesday.
Graham Lloyd, Chief Executive Officer at College Employer Council, says he’s optimistic they can reach an agreement at mediation, but the demands are unrealistic.
“Their demands are extremely excessive, we’ve costed them at about a billion dollars, which would be a 55 per cent increase in our faculty costs,” says Lloyd.
Bargaining team member Martin Lee says the college faculty are not seeking a billion dollars in concessions but rather that colleges invest in students and a “system that works.”
“The colleges keep coming at us with proposals to increase precarity, change the academic year so that things like our time to get classes ready and do right by our students is being cut, says Lee, second VP of OPSEU Local 415.
Lloyd says a strike would be unfair to this cohort of students who have seen previous disruptions from the pandemic, while Lee says they are fighting for students to have a system that works well for them.
Negotiations for a new collective agreement continue between the Ontario Public Service Employees Union, representing 20,000 academic employees across 24 colleges and the College Employer Council.
