Fanshawe students worry about potential impact to school year if instructors walk off job

Students at Fanshawe College say that they’re concerned they’ll be caught in the middle of a labour dispute that could affect their school year.

Fanshawe College Pre-Health student Nawal Hassan said that unfortunately, it feeks all too familiar, “I feel like if they were to go on strike it would definitely prolong, you know this whole kind of like COVID 19 situation again…” referring to gaps and delays in learning in recent years. "[Just] because of the time and duration of the extended period of our program.”

Her friend, Pre-Health student Wadang Manyuant, is also concerned about advancing to the next stage in her academic career, “It’s an eight-month certificate between the whole year, and we’re using that to be able to go to an advanced diploma like to university or something. So, if the teachers were to go on strike that would kind of lengthen the certificate, and kind of just make it more time for us to get that thing which we need for our undergrad,” she explained.

Fanshawe College Pre-Health students Wadang Manyuat and Nawal Hassan are worried their teachers could go on strike (Bryan Bicknell/CTV News London)

Last week unionized college employees across the province voted 79 per cent in favour of a strike mandate, with 76 per cent casting ballots. The Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU) represents roughly 15,000 professors and instructors, librarians, and counsellors, including between 1,200 and 1,300 members at Fanshawe College.

Fanshawe OPSEU Local 110 President Mark Feltham said his members don’t want to go on strike, but feel they have no choice.

“The employer keeps essentially refusing to bargain with us. They go through the motions, they table a bunch of concessions, rollbacks to some existing rights in our collective agreement. They’re representing them as breakthroughs, but actually they would increase our workload,” said Feltham.

CTV News asked Fanshawe College for an interview but was directed to the College Employer Council, which represents Ontario colleges. In a news release last week, the CEC said “a strike of any kind is unnecessary,” and that it has offered to go to mediated arbitration.

Fanshawe College (Source: CTV News London file photo)

It also claimed the union’s demands would increase college costs by $1 billion annually.

“Definitely affects a lot of the semester because during the strikes a few years ago, I believe we had one as well, we had to play catch up, so it was a lot of homework piled on top of the students, which makes it a lot harder on us,” said Fanshawe College Television Broadcasting student Tyler Bello.

The union’s contract expired on October 1, the two sides have been bargaining since July.