Cambrian College has issued a statement reinforcing its commitment to students if faculty at Ontario?s 24 colleges of applied arts and technology go out on strike at midnight Tuesday.
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Cambrian College faculty members held an information picket Feb. 20, attempting to pressure college management into signing a new collective agreement and avert a looming strike. |
?It is our hope that there will be a resolution by then,? said Cambrian president Sylvia Barnard in the statement. ?However, if that is not the case, we want to assure our students we are committed to doing everything possible to ensure they meet their learning outcomes for the year.?
In Sudbury, 240 faculty at Cambrian College and 110 faculty at College Boréal are involved.
A strike would suspend classes for nearly 6,000 full-time students at the two colleges as well as thousands of continuing education students.
Cambrian students would be affected immediately while College Boréal students would not be significantly affected until March 13 as they are on March Break this week.
Ontario colleges are urging the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU) to work with colleges to reach a negotiated agreement and not take its faculty members on strike Tuesday.
?There is no reason for OPSEU to disrupt the students? education at this critical time in the school year,? said Rick Miner, chair of the colleges? committee of presidents. ?The colleges have provided a good offer to faculty and it is important the union works with us to reach an agreement.?
The key elements of the colleges? offer to OPSEU are:
* A 12.6-per-cent increase in salary over four years, which would move the new maximum salary to $94,277 by April 2009
* An increase over four years for two-step coordinators (faculty who have additional coordinating duties) that would move their new maximum salary to $99,303
* No increase to workload.
?Our students have every reason to expect classes to continue as usual this week,? Miner said. ?It is important that OPSEU works with us to get an agreement and ensure that classes continue.?
The Ontario Public Service Employees? Union represents 9100 full-time and partial-load faculty (professors, counsellors and librarians) at Ontario?s 24 community colleges.
Across Ontario, college faculty rejected management?s last offer by 91 precent last November (96 percent at Cambrian and 100 percent at Boréal).
On Feb. 3, faculty voted 80.4 percent across the province to authorize a strike if necessary (90.3 percent at Cambrian and 94.5 percent at Boréal.
A statement from OPSEU Local 655 representing staff at Cambrian College says the main issues in the dispute are faculty workload and salary. The union is demanding improvements to the workload formula with increases to the factors for preparation and evaluation to more closely reflect the actual work done.
This would result in smaller class sizes and necessitate the hiring of additional full-time faculty. The aim of faculty demands is to improve the quality of college education, they say.
They say management?s offer would significantly increase the work required from full-time faculty.
On salary, faculty are demanding a 4.1 percent increase in each year of a two-year contract in order to place their salaries between those of high school teachers and university professors. Currently, maximum college faculty salaries are approximately on a par with those of high school teachers and about $30,000 per year less than those of university professors.
College management is offering a formula that works out to a 2.43 percent increase in each year of a four-year contract.
?We do not want a strike?, said John Closs, president of OPSEU Local 655 at Cambrian College, ?but we are ready to strike if we have to," in a news release.
