In February of last year, we witnessed the very first sparks of what would become a tense, hostile and ultimately unsuccessful bargaining round. The College Employer Council (CEC) proposed an offer to extend their collective agreement with the provincial college union OPSEU-O despite faculty concerns over the need to review and update its terms.
The collective agreement is a mutually agreed upon contract between employer and employee that governs working conditions for unionized workers.
The Dialog has extensively covered ongoing union negotiations, and frankly a lot has happened. In light of the “anniversary” of its beginnings and in effort to explain the ongoing situation’s basis, below is a timeline of significant labour-related events that occurred over the past year.
July 2: Bargaining commences
Bargaining team members, who are all elected, full-time professors, often refer to the CEC’s proposal in February as having set the tone for negotiating. CAAT-A, which represents unionized full-time and partial load professors, instructors, counsellors, and librarians rejected various settlement offers from the CEC, which they believed did not address issues raised in a meaningful way.
The parties met 12 separate times from July to November to discuss amendments to policies that would limit precarious work, better support equity groups and Indigenous rights, as well as protect intellectual property of staff. Certain terms such as workload conditions have not been amended since 1985, and the union further argued a need for change to accommodate for the pandemic.
September 30: Collective agreement expires, but still no resolution
A few days before the expiration of the agreement, the parties introduced Mediator Brian Keller to the table when they were unable to come to a compromise. Keller escalated matters when he released a report on his findings, which seemed to indicate that the union was being unreasonable throughout negotiations and pursuing amendments which were far-reaching. CAAT-A, on the other hand, reported that they had done their best to minimize proposals and claimed that Keller’s findings were released without communicating with the union directly.
Keller concluded negotiations and announced that a non-adversarial process would occur in March.
November 1: CEC files unfair labour practice complaint, moves towards conciliation
The morning of what was supposed to be a meeting between the two parties to discuss how to proceed when negotiations had escalated, the CEC filed for conciliation. Conciliation is a more formal process of bargaining mediated by the Ministry of Labour, and would allow the union to initiate a strike vote if it should fail. The unfair labour practice complaint was issued largely based on Mediator Keller’s report, which CAAT-A accused of being biased and in some parts even belligerent.
November 11: Conciliation on-going, media blackout lifts
Following conversations away from the public eye, initial communications from both OPSEU-O and the CEC seemed to indicate a possibility for settlement. Both sides reported that negotiations were more productive than they had been previously, and CAAT-A seemed confident that they would be able to achieve what they hoped for with the employer’s newest proposal.
Unfortunately, those positive conversations were short-lived.
The CEC accused CAAT-A of refusing a blackout extension, while the union claimed that they never received such a request. To add fuel to the fire, OPSEU-O began to rally union members via a bargaining update meeting, which was followed swiftly by a CFS-O acknowledgment of support for faculty.
November 13: CEC asks for “no board report”
The report is meant to assert that conciliation has failed, and it allows the employer to impose terms and conditions 16 days after the report is received. This would allow the CEC to effectively bar employees from working unless they follow terms that have been laid out by them.
Of course, further escalation occurred when the CEC made this request, which often brings about an employee strike or lockout. The CEC saw the union’s refusal to affirm Mediator Keller’s report to justify their decision.
November 20: OPSEU-O calls for strike vote
CAAT-A interpreted the “no board report” as the CEC having walked away from negotiations, virtually forcing them to organize on behalf of faculty.
According to the union, the CEC could have potentially chosen to engage in voluntary binding arbitration, which would allow a neutral third party to create a collective agreement that incorporates proposals from both sides, or a Forced Offer Vote (FOV). Instead, the college employer was vying for Final Offer Selection (FOS), a process that would allow a third party to select one side’s proposal in its entirety with no room for compromise.
This, as well as their refusal to allegedly engage with the bargaining team in either of their proposed negotiation processes, was perceived as a dead-end for further negotiations.
What followed was a series of outreach and awareness campaigns seeking to encourage faculty to vote ‘yes’ in the upcoming vote.
December 9-11: Virtual vote conducted, successful by 59.4 per cent ‘yes’
Despite claims of misinformation and fearmongering campaigns conducted by the CEC to sway union members, faculty ultimately voted in favour of labour action. The employer imposed terms and conditions as expected, which then kicked off the ongoing work-to-rule campaign, the first of its kind for Ontario colleges.
Work-to-rule is an action that has employees working to the minimum specifications of job requirements in their contract. This method was chosen over a strike for the sake of allowing students to continue their studies without disruption, the goal being to put pressure on those in power, particularly college presidents, and encourage them to denounce the CEC’s actions.
January 15: CAAT-A files unfair labour practice complaint against CEC
While faculty members continued the work-to-rule effort, the CEC was accused of encouraging staff to disengage from labour action to the point of blatant harassment in certain cases. CAAT-A filed a complaint in response to a letter from the employer demanding a stop to the spread of apparently “anti-college rhetoric” in their messaging among other issues.
January 24: CEC proposes FOV
A FOV, which the college employer initially shunned, will be held from February 15-17 to hear the union’s opinion on their latest settlement offer. Interestingly, the offer is essentially the same as the one that led to the strike vote, leaving many members questioning the CEC’s intentions.
Essentially, nothing has changed. Faculty will continue work-to-rule until their employers want to negotiate again.
Time will tell what the outcome of this debacle will be.
Stay tuned for the latest on the labour dispute here at the Dialog.
