Averting a strike by Ontario college faculty late Thursday couldn’t have come soon enough for Jessica Morrison and Caroline Lambert.
The third-year graphic design students at Barrie’s downtown Georgian College campus said Friday morning they were surprised but hopeful after the faculty’s union and college officials determined binding interest arbitration would settle their differences in negotiations for a new collective bargaining agreement.
“It was definitely a shock (that a strike was averted Friday), but I was thrilled,” said Morrison, 25, from Beeton. “Right now it’s a huge sense of relief. Obviously none of us know what’s going to happen in the coming weeks and days, but for third years we’re supposed to be graduating and we’ve got four weeks left, so to not have a strike just means one less thing for us to worry about near the end.”
Lambert, 30, said not having a strike affects the quality of education she gets at the Arch and Helen Brown Design and Digital Arts Centre on Ross Street.
“This is my last semester, so it means I can probably graduate on time. It means not having to stop any of our assignments,” said the Uxbridge native. “Even if we were all to graduate on time, some of our assignments would have been cancelled during the strike. It would have meant going out into the work world maybe not fully prepared. It would have meant missing opportunities, more contact with our teachers.”
The collective agreement involving full-time and partial-load professors, instructors, librarians and counsellors expired last Sept. 30.
The College Employer Council (CEC), which represents all of Ontario’s 24 public colleges, and the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU), representing faculty, have been at an impasse for weeks. Key issues include workload, the contracting out of faculty work and benefits for part-time faculty, according to OPSEU.
Faculty members voted 59 per cent in favour of a strike mandate in December and were prepared to strike Friday at 12:01 a.m. It would have affected more than 240,000 students at Ontario colleges, along with some 16,000 college faculty members.
Binding interest arbitration, which was agreed to late Thursday night, involves asking a neutral arbitrator to resolve a dispute by building a compromise from two competing proposals.
Lambert said that averting a strike is a good sign and she’s cautiously optimistic that a compromise can be found.
“They’ve been trying to bargain and fix the issue for so long I wasn’t really sure the last hurrah (Thursday’s meeting) was going to make any difference. Maybe it was only considered because it was the night before the actual strike,” she said.
“I’m hopeful that they can (find a compromise). I really strongly believe that not just our teachers deserve better, but I think that we deserve better - especially because of the last couple of years that we’ve all gone through,” Lambert said of the pandemic.
“If they’ve come back to the bargaining table, maybe there is a solution.”
Morrison also said she hopes middle ground can be found.
“We’ve come so far. We started off in-person (classes), then we had to move on-line because of COVID, so this is just right now a huge sense of relief,” she said.
“I think for the faculty and the students, that would be the best course of events (finding a compromise),” Morrison said. “So I’m still holding out hope. I don’t know about everyone else but I really do hope so.”
The CEC and OPSEU issued a joint statement Thursday night saying the strike was called off and this also included work-to-rule strike activities.
Georgian College also has a Georgian Drive campus in Barrie and campuses in Orillia, Midland, Muskoka (Bracebridge), Orangeville, Owen Sound and South Georgian Bay (Collingwood).
