Greetings faculty:
Ontario college faculty have rejected a contract offer from their employer and are calling on the College Employer Council to either come back to the table and finish the job of negotiating a collective agreement, or enter into voluntary binding interest arbitration.
In voting this week, 62% per cent of you voted to reject Council’s January 17 offer.
It is no surprise that college faculty rejected the Council’s forced offer. You sent a clear message that this offer failed to address your concerns around time for students, fairness for all faculty, and education quality. We stand with hundreds of thousands of our students when we say ‘enough already.’
We are inviting the CEC team to come back to the bargaining table and complete these negotiations. If they continue to refuse to negotiate, then we ask them to at least provide certainty for students by agreeing to go to voluntary binding interest arbitration.
The forced offer vote was a one-time option allowed under the Colleges Collective Bargaining Act.
It is unfortunate that Council caused further stress to students and faculty by calling for this vote rather than negotiate, but now that it’s over, it’s time to provide the certainty they claim they want.
Calling for this vote was a bully move by Council, but faculty have stood together against their aggressive tactics throughout this round of negotiations. With any amount of cooperation from Council at the bargaining table, we can settle this. Faculty deserve better after doing their best to support our students during the pandemic. And students need to know the colleges will support them in their learning.
We encourage the CEC’s bargaining team to either settle this immediately at the table or agree to go to binding interest arbitration. It’s time for them to put students first.
We congratulate all faculty for taking the necessary steps to help ensure a fair and reasonable settlement by standing up for yourselves and your students.
In solidarity,JP,
Jonathan, Katie, Michelle, Ravi, Rebecca, Shawn