Faculty at Ontario colleges will participate in a strike vote later this month to back their union's demands over job security and workload.
The OPSEU/SEFPO College Faculty Bargaining Team says the Ontario Labour Relations Board will conduct the strike vote starting at noon on October 15 and ending at 3 p.m. on October 17.
"For months, we have highlighted the need to modernize our contracts to meet today's student and faculty needs," said Acting Chair of the College Faculty Bargaining Team Michelle Arbour. "Quality education isn't supported by reducing student evaluation time or advancing narrow concepts of teaching, which exclude supporting students outside the classroom."
The union said faculty only have 5 minutes and 24 seconds a week to evaluate each student. That ceiling hasn't changed since 1985. On top of that, only a quarter of members get that much time.
"Any student or parent can tell you that quality education starts and ends with the frontline faculty training to prepare them for entering the labour force," said President JP Hornick. "We're fighting for a better college system because we know firsthand that student and faculty futures depend on each other."
The union entered contract negotiations with the College Employer Council last July. Its proposals have been on the table since September 10, but the bargaining team says the council has proposed concessions.
Arbour noted the colleges are experiencing historic profits. System-wide, the surplus has grown to $1-billion this year on top of $1.3-billion in provincial investment.
"Those funds should be readily invested in quality education," she said. "Instead, we're seeing precarity on the rise as partial-load faculty hiring outpaces full-time faculty hiring," she said. "Three-quarters of teachers, counsellors, and librarians working in Ontario colleges are on short-term contracts with little to no benefits for job security and no redress for workload concerns."
Arbour accused colleges of "rapidly expanding a corporate, for-profit model of education on the backs of the most precarious workers and students."
"Our proposals invest in hands-on, job-ready education that trains Ontario's future," she added.
Faculty have long complained about workload, and a report from the Workload Task Force, mandated by Arbitrator William Kaplan in 2022, confirmed their concerns. It said, "all modes of instruction delivery have resulted in workload increases," while partial-load faculty are performing duties outside of their contracts, and counsellors and librarians report unpaid overtime.
The College Faculty Bargaining Team plans to release the results after members cast their ballots.