Ontario colleges avoid strike as labour dispute heads to arbitration

Students at Ontario’s 24 public colleges attended classes as usual on Friday after the union representing 16,000 faculty staff and the council of college administrators agreed to send their labour dispute to binding arbitration.

“The parties have reached an agreement to enter binding interest arbitration and the strike that was scheduled to commence at 12:01 a.m. on March 18, 2022, is called off,” the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU) and the College Employer Council (CEC) said in a brief joint statement after 12 hours at the bargaining table. “This also concludes all work-to-rule strike activities,” it added.

The move means a neutral arbitrator will receive proposals from both the union and employer group and create a compromise each must abide by. A strike or lockout would have affected some 250,000 Ontario college students.

The two sides have been at loggerheads over workload, the contracting out of faculty work, and benefits for part-time faculty, the union says, with professors, instructors, librarians and counsellors working without a collective agreement since October. Faculty have been escalating work-to-rule actions since December.

Lawyer William Kaplan has been appointed to the role of arbitrator, the CEC’s chief executive Graham Lloyd said.

"After all that students, faculty and the college community have been through over the past two years, we felt it was essential that we put our differences aside and conclude these negotiations without a strike," Lloyd said.

Dates for the arbitration sessions have not yet been set.

The CEC said earlier in the week that the union’s workload demands did not meet the lawful requirements of compensation legislation.

Morgan Sharp / Local Journalism Initiative / Canada’s National Observer