COLLEGE EMPLOYER COUNCIL
Ontario College Strike Action is Completely Unnecessary

OPSEU's threat to plunge Ontario into a province-wide College strike is wholly unnecessary and a deeply disappointing provocation before both sides sit down for mediation, set to resume today.

The College Employer Council (CEC) is currently in negotiations with OPSEU, which represents full-time and partial-load professors, instructors, and librarians. CEC wants to keep all 24 Ontario Colleges open and 450,000 students in the classroom, but it needs a negotiating partner pursuing the same goal.

At each stage in this process, OPSEU has chosen needless escalation as opposed to working towards a fair and reasonable solution.

• OPSEU persists in putting forward wholly unaffordable demands costing over $1 billion, including a 25% reduction in average teaching time for professors and instructors
• OPSEU rejected the offer of binding arbitration to achieve a new contract, which CEC has offered, and OPSEU requested to settle the last contract in 2021
• On December 12, OPSEU proactively sought permission to strike from the Ministry of Labour before both sides could meet again this week
• Last Friday, at its first opportunity and again ahead of this week's planned mediation, OPSEU gave notice province-wide College strike action could begin Thursday, January 9.

"We want to avoid an unnecessary strike," said Graham Lloyd, CEO of CEC. "We urge OPSEU to set aside its focus on going out on strike and instead enter mediation this week with more realistic demands so we can get a deal done. Since July, we've been explaining to the union the financial challenges facing the College sector, including a projected $1.7 billion in losses, and emphasizing the importance of ensuring their demands are reasonably aligned with these realities.  Instead, they threaten to jeopardize students' education through strike action for demands they admitted on September 18^th to not costing."

The Colleges remain committed to recognizing the hard work of faculty through our proposals. We have made every effort to address OPSEU's workload demands through proposals on modes of delivery, increased time for out-of-class assistance for students, overtime pay provisions for counsellors and librarians, and increases in wages and benefits.

"Students and faculty should not have to endure the stress of an unneeded strike, particularly considering OPSEU is making demands it knows the Colleges can never agree to, such as reducing their class time by 25%, to less than an average of 9 hours per week. Their demands increase academic costs for Colleges by 55% annually," said Dr. Laurie Rancourt, Chair of the management bargaining team. "The CEC remains committed to a solution without interrupting student learning. We urge OPSEU to reconsider their approach in favour of an outcome that is fair and sustainable for everyone".

The CEC first proposed binding arbitration in October 2024. This is the usual way of settling past labour disputes between the CEC and OPSEU in the post-secondary sector. Even J.P Hornick, current OPSEU President and former chair of the faculty bargaining team promoted this type of dispute resolution in the last round of bargaining. The CEC doesn't understand why OPSEU is suddenly against binding arbitration after multiple endorsement. We urge the current academic bargaining team to reconsider for the sake of students, faculty, and the greater College community.

Mediation resumed on January 6, 2025, and the CEC hopes OPSEU will drop its demands for significant reductions in teaching time and engage in meaningful exchanges of proposals.