Strike vote underway for Fanshawe faculty members

They are issues that the union representing instructors at Fanshawe College say could dramatically impact the futures of staff, and it has nothing to do with money.

"There's no wages or benefits on the table right now,” said Darryl Bedford, president of Local 110 of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU), representing about 800 Fanshawe College staff.

A bargaining unit representing unions from Ontario’s 24 community colleges is currently in negotiations with the College Employer Council (CEC), which bargains for the colleges.

Bedford says 80 per cent of the Fanshawe College instructors are contract staff, working from contract to contract every year. The hiring list maintained by the college isn’t made available to the workers, “We feel that needs to be open and transparent and that’s what our partial-load faculty are asking for.”

Bedford says concerns about the status of contract staff have been compounded with word of a recently reached agreement.

"Fanshawe has signed an agreement with private college in Toronto to license, right now, four of our programs — but it will be expanding to more," said Bedford.

The agreement is with ILAC International College, a private institution geared to international students. The courses will be introduced in the spring of next year.

Bedford says those courses will use curriculum developed by Fanshawe staff. He says it was uploaded for broader use during the pandemic.

"Those are materials which they uploaded in good faith. They put their heart and soul into them, put them there for the benefit of Fanshawe College and its students and they are now going to be used by a private college in Toronto," Bedford explained.

He says that intellectual property issue is one of the key reasons for the strike mandate request from OPSEU 101.

The voting is taking place online and the period will last three days between Dec. 9 and 11. It will close at 3 p.m. on Saturday and the result should be available shortly after the final ballot is cast.

A strike would not only impact students but industries like health care and the trades, which are desperately seeking employees.

Atrab Bardoum is a first year Pre-Health Sciences student, “That is concerning, just because of the impact of COVID right now and the need for more health care professionals, especially nurses.”

Erin Rees supports the staff’s right to take part in job action, “If the strike’s going to have a good outcome and our instructors are more comfortable in the workplace, and what they advocated for in the strike is met, than it’s better for everyone.”

Bedford says staff would only strike if they absolutely had to and would first consider other job action, such as work-to-rule.

He says the union’s preference is to send all outstanding issues to binding arbitration. He says that is what ultimately ended a faculty strike in 2017.

Bedford says the CEC has requested final offer selection, where the arbitrator would be forced to choose between “all of one offer, or all of another offer.”

He says that that will create a scenario where there is a winner and a loser, where full arbitration could be a win-win.