Talks between Ontario’s public colleges and its union have again broken down as a strike involving more than 10,000 support workers drags into its third week.
On Monday, both the Ontario Public Service Employees Union and the College Employer Council confirmed talks between the two sides had broken down without any sign of a deal.
The two sides have been at an impasse over a new contract for support workers since before a strike was triggered on Sept. 11, when staff at Ontario’s 24 publicly-funded colleges walked off the job.
The key sticking points between the two sides appear to still revolve around job security, including rules about colleges contracting out services or what tasks can be taken on by administrators.
Christine Kelsey, chair of the full-time support staff bargaining team, said in a statement the union was worried about job losses, after an 18-month period in which at least 8,000 workers have been laid off across the college sector.
“We are walking the line to protect our work — after thousands upon thousands of layoffs across the system, there’s nothing else this fight can be about,” she said.
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“None of the employer’s proposals save a single job. True job security looks like protections against the elimination of jobs, not extended notice or streamlining new pathways for layoffs.”
Graham Lloyd, the CEO of the College Employer Council, said two requests from the union were around contracting services and limits on who can take on tasks not directly related to their jobs.
“Although we were making good progress, or we thought we were, they actually reverted back and made one of them even more arduous to try and live up to and informed us there would be no path forward unless we agreed to at least one of them,” he said.
“Our position hasn’t changed since June and August, when we were telling them that we could never agree to these.”
Ontario NDP Leader Marit Stiles said it was “deeply concerning that these talks are not going well.”
Some positions appear to have fallen away, including an initial request from the union to guarantee no jobs would be lost and no campuses would be merged.
Still, the two sides say they remain far from an agreement.
“Rather than get us back to work supporting students, college presidents’ directive has been to refuse job security language,” Kelsey said.
“They have united against workers in the middle of an accelerated agenda to dismantle public education.”
Lloyd said that, even if the province were to offer colleges more money to help them come to a deal — something the government has not suggested — it wouldn’t solve the situation.
“We cannot ever bind a college to (never) contract out without union permission, and we cannot bind the collaborative work and some of the work the administrators may do on an occasional basis,” he said. “It really isn’t financially motivated.”
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