Canadore president George Burton says the faculty strike that started at 24 Ontario colleges, including Canadore this morning (Monday), is an unnecessary strike.

He’s hopeful the work stoppage doesn’t drag on.

“The best advice I can give is let’s have a look at management’s last offer, let’s get it to the membership to vote on and let’s see if we can get this settled quickly,” Burton says.

On top of improvements to job security and fair treatment for contract faculty, OPSEU has called a stronger voice in academic decision making.

Burton says faculty do have a say through their program advisory committees and they have a high degree of academic freedom with course content.

“But, when it comes to the programs we offer and how they’re delivered we have to maintain that relationship with the marketplace, because we’re in the job of readying students, graduates for immediate employment, that’s what we’re about,” he says.

Overall, Burton says the union’s demands would ultimately add more than $250 million to annual costs, eliminate thousands of contract faculty jobs, and jeopardize the quality of college programs.

He also points out students have never lost an academic year because of a labour disruption.

 

Meantime, John Patterson is president of the faculty union at Canadore.

He appreciates what students and parents are going through right now with no classes, but he says there’s just not enough full time faculty, and that needs to be addressed.

“Across the province we have dropped down to 20 % full time faculty and that’s just not acceptable. We would like to see that number increased to about 50 %,” he says.

Patterson says the system is broken at the colleges with so few full time faculty and the government has a role to play in finding a solution.

“We think that we have the right solutions to repair that and we’re looking for the government to step in as well and encourage management to make the right decisions about change,” he says.

 

 

For Canadore students with questions about the labour situation:
 CLICK HERE for a link to a labour update on Canadore’s website.

For Nipissing students who may have questions on approaching a picket line, the university has posted information:
(CLICK HERE) on their website. gt;