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January 14th, 2010 <!-- by admin -->
Students Still Fear a Province-wide Academic Strike
Toronto, ON—Ontario’s college and college-university students are demanding that both bargaining teams of the college’s academic staff and management go back to the bargaining table following yesterday’s province-wide strike vote, says the College Student Alliance (CSA).
“Students are seriously worried that in the near future they will be pulled out of their learning environments and faced with the academic staff walking a picket line,” says Justin Fox, President of the College Student Alliance. “Both sides need to remember that college students as well as the taxpayers are footing the bill and as such a greater emphasis must be placed on reaching a negotiated settlement.”
Yesterday in a province-wide strike vote, 57.03 per cent of Ontario’s full-time academic staff voted in favour of giving their union, the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU), a strike mandate and the ability to pull them off the job if negotiations don’t progress in their favour. Compared to the last round of bargaining’s strike vote, which yielded a voter turnout of 65.5 per cent with 80.4 percent voting in favour of a strike.
“The goal now must be for both sides to go back to the bargaining table and stay there until a new collective agreement is reached without a work stoppage,” adds Fox.
In anticipation of the results, concerned students and parents took to www.collegestrike.ca to vent their concerns, frustrations and fears of a potential province-wide strike. Collegestrike.ca was designed to give students and all concerned up-to-date information, the straight facts and a place for them to express themselves.
7 " Students Still Fear a Province-wide Academic Strike
Toronto, ON—Ontario’s college and college-university students are demanding that both bargaining teams of the college’s academic staff and management go back to the bargaining table following yesterday’s province-wide strike vote, says the College Student Alliance (CSA).
“Students are seriously worried that in the near future they will be pulled out of their learning environments and faced with the academic staff walking a picket line,” says Justin Fox, President of the College Student Alliance. “Both sides need to remember that college students as well as the taxpayers are footing the bill and as such a greater emphasis must be placed on reaching a negotiated settlement.”
Yesterday in a province-wide strike vote, 57.03 per cent of Ontario’s full-time academic staff voted in favour of giving their union, the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU), a strike mandate and the ability to pull them off the job if negotiations don’t progress in their favour. Compared to the last round of bargaining’s strike vote, which yielded a voter turnout of 65.5 per cent with 80.4 percent voting in favour of a strike.
“The goal now must be for both sides to go back to the bargaining table and stay there until a new collective agreement is reached without a work stoppage,” adds Fox.
In anticipation of the results, concerned students and parents took to www.collegestrike.ca to vent their concerns, frustrations and fears of a potential province-wide strike. Collegestrike.ca was designed to give students and all concerned up-to-date information, the straight facts and a place for them to express themselves.
January 17th, 2010, 06:15 PM
College faculty to hold strike voteBy Jenny Yuen, Toronto Sun
Last Updated: 8th January 2010, 12:33pm
Ontario college students are facing a February without instructors.
The Ontario Public Service Employees' Union – which represents roughly 7,000 full-time and 3,000 part-time faculty – is set to hold a strike vote Wednesday, which could mean staff at all 24 Ontario colleges could walk off the job by early February.
"The union says they're doing this to improve quality down the road, but that's very hard to hear for students who are in colleges now," said Tyler Charlebois, advocacy director of College Student Alliance. "They're going into debt and to hear you have to suffer for someone down the road. That's a hard pill for many students to swallow."
It would be the second college strike in four years. The last strike in March 2006 lasted three weeks.
The key bargaining issues are workload and how academic decisions are made, said union spokesman Ted Montgomery.
"It's about having the teachers determine how they teach, which is taken for granted everywhere else," he said. "We wouldn't want to see students lose their year. We would expect something to happen to prevent that. But at the same time it's not just about today's students."
If a strike vote passes, the union would be in a legal strike position Jan. 18.
Colleges Ontario spokesman Sally Ritchie said the union demands are too costly.
"We don't see the need for a strike," Ritchie said. "We're providing faculty with an 8% increase over four years, which moves the maximum salary to $104,000 and we're not increasing workload."
Montgomery contends wages are not an issue, although the union is not pleased with the employers implementing a 1.75% increase for two years and then 2% for the following two. It says it's not streamlined with inflation and a 2.5% increase over three years makes more sense.