Strike looms over St. Clair College amid provincial labour dispute

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Faculty and staff at Windsor’s St. Clair College, along with its counterparts across the province, could start the new year on strike amid unresolved labour negotiations.

The Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU) has received a requested no-board report, which is a notice from the Ministry of Labour that a conciliation board will not be appointed when an agreement can’t be reached.

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This initiates a 16-day countdown before a strike or lockout can begin, with Jan. 4 as the earliest possible date for labour action. 

“We have fantastic labour relations with our local management team,” OPSEU Local 138 president Mark Colangelo told the Star. “The issues that we’re dealing with are provincial issues.”

Officials with the College Employer Council, the bargaining agent for Ontario’s 24 colleges, said talks that took place from Dec. 6-8 to reach a deal were unsuccessful but it “continues to bargain in good faith and has asked OPSEU to reconsider its demands.”

“The CEC has demonstrated that they will not move forward unless compelled — so push has come to shove,” union officials said in a statement. “Members deserve the honest and realistic assessment that the CEC’s repeated unwillingness to bargain freely and fairly is unlikely to change without the urgency of labour action.

“The CEC’s public joust that we are ‘reducing classroom time’ is a way to exclude prep work, evaluation, and curriculum development as integral parts of teaching – and to avoid addressing that faculty don’t have enough time for real student support, even with each member contributing over $24,000 of unpaid labour a year.”

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Faculty proposals centre around less work precarity, better wages, enhanced job security, and an end to the unpaid labour that the Workload Task Force identified the colleges currently receive, according to the union. 

“There are people within our local who work with precarious work each and every semester,” Colangelo said. “They don’t know from one semester to the next if they are going to have a contract.

“(They don’t know) how many hours they are going to be teaching or what their workload is going to be like. We would like them to have the ability to have more certainty from a work perspective.”

While the OSPEU will be in a legal strike position as of Jan. 4, a strike may not begin then, according to Colangelo. He added that both sides are scheduled for mediation from Jan. 6-8, with hopes of reaching a deal without labour disruption.

“We’re always hopeful that those negotiations are fruitful,” said Colangelo, who is also a professor in the developmental service worker program at St. Clair College. “Calling for the no board was not with intent to start labour action. The intent was to put pressure on the management side to come back and bargain fairly and quickly. 

“We’ve been negotiating since July. This is just a way to help stoke the fire so that we get some movement at the negotiating table and come up with a reasonable settlement for both sides.”

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— With files from The Canadian Press

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