The union representing faculty at Ontario’s 24 colleges, including Humber Polytechnic, intends to file for conciliation after contract negotiations reached an impasse.
If conciliation talks fail, students could be caught in the middle of a strike of about 15,000 faculty. The contract expires Sept. 30.
After 14 days of bargaining, negotiations between the faculty union, the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU) and the College Employer Council (CEC) are nearing their final stages. If talks stall or fail, the next step is to seek conciliation and if necessary, call for a membership vote to give the union’s bargaining team a strike mandate.
It's also possible that the CEC could lock out faculty if all steps fail.
In an email sent to union members on Sept. 18, OPSEU said it filing for conciliation, suggesting an impasse. Both sides must take part in the conciliation process, but the union may also seek a strike mandate vote. Members include teaching faculty, librarians and counsellors.
The last strike was in 2017 which lasted five weeks until the then-provincial Liberal government legislated an end to the standoff.
The College Student Alliance (CSA), which Humber’s student government IGNITE is aligned with, said it's hoped both sides can reach an agreement without a strike.
"CSA's primary concern is for the students, and that they continue to receive the quality of education they have paid for,” said Jasmine Bates, the president of the CSA, in an email. “We are hopeful the parties will put students first and find a way forward that does not include a disruption to the student experience."
The faculty union is pushing for numerous improvements to the contract, including wages, medical benefits, job stability and updates to the Standard Workload Formula (SWF)
The SWF is a tool to calculate the workload of full-time teaching faculty in Ontario. The report highlights an increase in unpaid tasks faculty perform outside of work.
While CEC said it acknowledges SWF should be addressed, it is calling for a more comprehensive review of data is needed.
In an email to Humber Et Cetera, the CEC said that recommendations given in a task force report that studied SWF “are based on an incomplete analysis of the data collected” and that it needs time to “thoroughly review the raw data.”
The union tabled its monetary demands of a five per cent salary increase effective Oct. 1, 2024, followed by another five per cent increase on Oct. 1, 2025. In addition to the general salary increases, the union has also suggested revisions to the salary tables for professors, librarians, counsellors, instructors, and partial-load employees.
The union has also proposed modifications to the insurance coverage as well. The changes proposed include increasing vision care limits to $800 from $400 every two years for adults and every year for those under 18.
Similarly, the hearing care coverage limit would increase to $4,000 from $3,000 over three years. Additionally, the union seeks to introduce co-paid systems for partial-load employees, providing access to dental, vision, and life insurance plans, with the colleges covering 50 per cent of the premiums.
The CEC management has yet to reply to the monetary proposals presented.
The college’s council said its position is to set reasonable expectations. It said in the email that the union took “an aggressive approach to these issues, which amounts to an annual increase in costs of more than $1 billion for the system.”
With SWF not being updated in the last 40 years, the union argues that the introduction to multi-model teaching, AODA legislation, AI, and worsening mental crisis calls for reforms.
Milos Vasic, president of Humber’s faculty union, Local 562, said the union disagrees that the demands will cost that much.
But he said any money spent “is an investment in the system.
“Probably it's going to cost more money because it's going to mean that more people are going to need to be hired,” Vasic said.
“If they say no to our workload to proposals, what they're really saying is that they don't want to invest in the humans that are actually delivering education,” he said.
