Ontario colleges: Job action looms as two sides remain far apart

Ontario college students may be out of the classroom as early as Thursday if a deal between the union representing college faculty and the organization that bargains for the province’s 24 public colleges can’t be reached. Both sides are sitting down for last-minute talks amid the specter of a sweeping strike. Our Jennifer Bieman reports.

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The latest

OPSEU, which represents approximately 15,000 professors, instructors, counselors and librarians at Ontario’s 24 public colleges, on Friday gave a five-day notice of labor action. The notice pave the way for a strike to begin on Thursday, Jan. 9.

OPSEU and Ontario’s College Employer Council – the group responsible for negotiating a deal on behalf of the province’s public colleges – meets Monday and will meet Tuesday for non-binding mediation.

In a statement Monday, the College Employer Council said OPSEU’s threat to plunge Ontario into a province-wide college strike is “wholly unnecessary and a deeply disappointing provocation.”

The union said in a statement Friday it is “committed to bargaining productively” but said the urgency created by a job action may be necessary to reach a deal.

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How we got here

The collective agreement between OPSEU college faculty and Ontario’s public colleges expired on Sept. 30, 2024.

OPSEU and the council began talks in July 2024 and agreed to conciliation, a dispute-resolution process involving a neutral third-party, in October.

The two sides met for mediation last month and agreed to additional mediation dates on Jan. 6 and 7.

A strike would affect the three public colleges in Southwestern Ontario – Fanshawe College, with campuses in London, Simcoe, St. Thomas and Woodstock; Lambton College in Sarnia; and St. Clair College’s Windsor and Chatham-Kent campuses.

The union’s asks

OPSEU is seeking less workplace precarity, better wages, improved job security for its members and an end to workloads that force faculty to do unpaid work out of necessity.

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The union contends its members do not have enough time to support students directly, prepare lessons or mark assignments and do these tasks on their own time, uncompensated.

The college system is being supported by the unpaid labor of its members, totaling approximately $24,500 per faculty member each year, the union said.

Among other asks, OPSEU is seeking changes to faculty workload standards, benchmarks it says have not been updated in four decades.

The council’s response

The council on Monday accused OPSEU of “putting forward entirely unaffordable demands” that would cost more than $1 billion and rejecting its October offer of binding arbitration to reach a new contract.

“Students and faculty should not have to endure the stress of an unneeded strike, particularly considering OPSEU is making demands it knows the colleges can never agree to,” management bargaining team chairperson Laurie Rancourt said in a statement.

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Rancourt said the council is urging OPSEU to shift its approach and prioritize an outcome that is “fair and sustainable for everyone.”

In a statement Monday, council chief executive Graham Lloyd said he told OPSEU of the financial stress on the college sector, including a projected $1.7 billion in losses due to the international student cap, and emphasized the “importance of ensuring their demands are reasonably aligned with these realities.”

Previous strikes and settlements

The threatened job action by OPSEU college faculty is not the first by the union. Days after the union issued a strike notice in March 2022, the council and OPSEU averted the job action by agreeing to binding arbitration.

In October 2017, approximately 12,000 OPSEU members, including about 800 Fanshawe faculty, walked off the job after a deal could not be reached with the council. Job security, and the increasing use of more precarious contract instructors, was a top concern for OPSEU at the time.

The provincial government legislated college faculty returned to work about a month after the strike began.

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