In a Twitter update released by the bargaining team on Monday morning, the college faculty team – which represents faculty at 24 Ontario colleges including George Brown – announced that they will be setting a strike deadline to push the CEC to either continue with negotiations or enter binding interest arbitration. If neither option is pursued by this Friday, March 18, all staff will begin picketing.
In a video featuring Darryl Bedford, the president of Fanshaw College faculty’s Local 110, Bedford said that moving towards a strike was pushed by two events that happened “behind the scenes”.
One of these incidents was the fact that senior CEC members have discussed locking faculty out after this semester ends. Bedford stated that college employers previously promised not to do this verbally, but this was never ratified.
The second motivator was Doug Ford’s call for an early election. The CAAT-A team calculated that following an election, the legislature would not be able to mandate that faculty can go back to work. If staff are locked out, they could potentially be left in this state until the Fall semester.
In interest of protecting union members, Bedford explained that they had no choice but to act immediately.
“The strike deadline is the only defensive action left in this scenario,” he said.
However, Bedford claims that even if a strike should occur, it will not be a typical one.
As many colleges are continuing to deliver programs virtually, the union sees no value in picketing in mostly empty campus buildings. Staff will be expected to protest in very few select locations, while most other actions will occur online and through social media platforms.
Bedford implores all staff to apply pressure via the work-to-rule campaign and to ensure that their employment information is correct in order to receive strike pay.
The union has maintained that supporting students through their learning is their utmost priority, which resulted in the initial decision to move into work-to-rule before a strike. As a result, students have been particularly vocal and critical about the bargaining team’s newest move.
“Think of OUR mental health, as students. We’ve been through hell these past few years. You say you’re doing this in favour of students, but how is it in favour of students if you’re disrupting our education?,” said one response on Twitter.
Acknowledging the frustrations of students who may be affected and the feelings of betrayal from staff members, Bedford says that collectively all college community members have been forced into an unpleasant circumstance by the college employers. Thus, anger towards the union should be channeled into anger towards them.
“We should all be mad at the CEC,” Bedford said.
As of the publication of this story, the CEC has not released a response to the news.
