BY KEITH LACEY
Stating it’s become almost impossible to provide
quality education with current workloads, the leaders of two union
locals representing faculty at Cambrian College and Collège Boréal
defended members’ decision to take province-wide strike
action.
 |
| name="valign" top > John Closs, president of OPSEU Local 655
(right), representing 240 teachers, counsellors and librarians at
Cambrian, and Jean-Pierre Sabourin, president of Local 673
(middle), representing 110 union members at Collège Boréal, held a
news conference Tuesday morning. They say more teachers are key to
quality education. |
Last-minute talks between the bargaining team for
the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU) and the
province’s College Compensation and Appointments Council broke off
Monday evening.
This is the first strike in Ontario’s college
system since 1989. Classes have been cancelled at all 24 of the
province’s community colleges, affecting more than half a million
full-time students.
Picket lines were set up outside entrances to
both Sudbury colleges early Tuesday, even though Collège Boréal
students won’t be affected by the
dispute until Monday as they are currently on
March Break.
About 6,000 students (more than 4,000 full-time),
are affected by the strike in Greater Sudbury.
With a little more than a month left before the
school year was scheduled to wrap up, the academic year for many
could be in jeopardy if the strike is prolonged.
Classes at Cambrian have been suspended although
the college will remain open. Students are free to cross picket
lines if they wish and access the library and labs, said Cambrian
president Sylvia Barnard.
Students are being advised not to withdraw from
programs, and the college is doing everything it can to help meet
learning outcomes for this year, said Barnard.
At Collège Boréal, all classes have been
suspended for the duration of the labour dispute. Massage therapy
and dental care clinics will also be closed.
At the main campus in Sudbury, learning support
services, health services, the resource centre, child care
services, and the fitness centre will remain open and available to
learners.
Anyone wishing to obtain more information should
visit the college website or phone the special information line at
1-866-521-6061.
John Closs, president of OPSEU Local 655
representing 240 professors, counsellors and librarians at
Cambrian, and Jean-Pierre Sabourin, president of Local 673
representing 110 union members at Collège Boréal, held a news
conference Tuesday morning.
This strike centres around allowing faculty to
provide quality education, which is no longer possible as workloads
prevent one-to-one contact with students. Class sizes are
intolerable and there have been cutbacks in hiring new faculty,
said Closs.
Workload ratios for professors have doubled in
just over a decade and are no longer acceptable, said Closs.
“Obviously, we don’t want to be on strike. We’d
all much rather be in the classroom doing what we love and teaching
our students,” said Closs. “But our bargaining team has been left
no other choice...this strike action is all about the quality of
education our students are being denied.”
The number of students accepted into the college
system has increased dramatically, but the number of professors and
other faculty has remained stagnant for more than a decade, said
Closs.
“The quality of education in our system is now at
the critical point,” he said.
Barnard disagrees saying the final offer made to
OPSEU would have maintained current workloads “which management
feels seems to be working.”
The union wants to reduce the amount of time
professors spend teaching each week to 12 hours from the current
average of 14, said Barnard.
(This does not include preparation time.)
This would cost Ontario’s college system $135
million to hire more faculty to fill the void, money that is simply
not available, said Barnard.
The union is stressing faculty involvement with
students is at the core of the dispute, but quality education is
about “much more than interaction with faculty,” she said.
Cambrian has invested major dollars to upgrade
equipment, materials and services in the past few years. “All of
these are also very crucial to receiving a quality education,” she
said.
Cambrian’s student and professor ratio this year
is at the provincial average of 23 to one and seven new teachers
were hired to maintain this, said Barnard.
“I guess what is at the heart of the dispute is a
disagreement over quality of education...it’s management’s position
this involves much more than simply having teachers spend less time
in the classroom,” she said.
It’s her job to lead a management team to make
contingency plans to ensure students can graduate as quickly as
possible once the dispute is over, said Barnard.
“During the last two college strikes in Ontario,
students did not lose their year and we are putting plans into
place to ensure that will again be the case once this dispute is
resolved,” she said.
Closs said union negotiators are not demanding
reducing weekly class hours but are calling for smaller classes and
more teachers.
Barnard and Closs said the wage package offered
during negotiations was close to what OPSEU’s team was looking for
and has nothing to do with
the current strike action.
