For students at Northern College and College Boreal—and other colleges across Ontario—you can officially scrap your plans for attending class Monday morning.

Word late Sunday evening is that the union (OPSEU) and the College Employer Council (CEC) failed to produce a tentative collective agreement.

JP Hornick, the the chair of the union’s bargaining team, says they presented the council a streamlined offer Saturday. One, he says in a release “represented what the faculty consider to be the bare minimum we need to ensure quality education for students and treat contract faculty fairly.”

It’s said the union’s proposal called for the number of full time faculty to match the number of faculty members under contract.

Hornick goes on to say that the CEC refused to agree on “even the no-cost terms, such as longer contracts for contract faculty and academic freedom.”

“This leaves us with no choice but to withdraw our services until such time as our employer is ready to negotiate seriously.”

Hornick suggests the CEC is committed to a “Walmart model of education” that is based on “reducing the role of full-time faculty and exploiting underpaid contract workers who have no job security beyond one semester.”

Meantime, the CEC spokeswoman Sonia Del Missier says the strike is “completely unnecessary.”

She says management was offering terms that were as good or better than recent settlements with teachers, college support staff, hospital professionals and Ontario public servants.

The College Student Alliance (CSA) is said to be frustrated with the decision and are urging the two parties to return to the bargaining table.

“Lost class time, especially a lost semester, can result in delayed graduation,” said Joel Willett, the president of CSA in a release. “Whether a student is in their first semester or their last, they’re going to feel the severity of this strike.”

He adds this type of uncertainty makes students feel hopeless given where the semester is and how difficult it would be to recover from a prolonged strike.

“Students don’t want to be put in the middle of negotiations or to be used as pawns,” Willett said, “They want to be in the classroom receiving the education they’ve invested heavily in.”

The strike deadline was set by the union for 12:01am Monday morning. The strike will affect more than 500,000 students in the province.

So what does that mean for college students? Well, Northern College has posted this FAQ for their students wondering about everything entailed by this strike, whether that be the simple question of if there are classes (no, there are no classes for now), whether a prospective student can still apply for January’s semester (yes, you can) and if students living in residence can continue living there (again, yes you can).

CLICK HERE for the full FAQ list.

(With files from The Canadian Press)

Filed under: Local News