Ontario faculty employees is not going to be happening strike this week after a last-minute deal was reached between the union and faculty council.
The School Employer Council (CEC) and the Ontario Public Providers Workers Union (OPSEU) met in Toronto from Jan. 6 to 7 for mediation.
For greater than six months, the CEC and OPSEU remained far aside on negotiations. If an answer was not reached, labour motion amongst greater than 15,000 college members would have begun on Thursday, Jan. 9, after the union submitted a five-day discover to the province’s Ministry of Labour final week.
“While the two sides otherwise remain at an impasse, the parties have agreed to send all outstanding items to mediation-arbitration. As a result, Ontario’s 24 public colleges will narrowly avoid a strike this term,” the union stated in an announcement on Wednesday.
The union stated its bargaining workforce has signed a memorandum of settlement with “significant benefit gains” that can support not less than 75 per cent of its workforce. The union has been preventing for higher working situations, job safety, greater wages and enchancment to the standard of schooling.
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CEC CEO Graham Lloyd says he’s happy to have averted a strike and that courses can proceed as scheduled for college students.
“Our goal throughout negotiations has been to recognize the hard work of academic employees and to keep students in class. To this end, CEC offered several breakthrough proposals such as enhanced benefits for all academic employees and improved access to benefits for partial-load employees,” Lloyd stated in a press launch on Wednesday.
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“Throughout the bargaining process CEC has put students first. The threat against their learning has been averted. Both OPSEU and CEC reached an agreement to arbitrate by finding compromises on many of the outstanding demands,” it continued.
A brand new contract for school college is ready to be dominated on at an additional date by Arbitrator William Kaplan.
