THUNDER BAY – With the five-week faculty strike at Ontario’s colleges expected to be brought to a close this weekend, Confederation College administration is readying for students to return to the classrooms early next week.
The provincial Liberal government scheduled a special sitting in the legislature on Friday where the tabled back to work legislation announced by Premier Kathleen Wynne on Thursday which would force the 12,000 striking professors, instructors, counsellors and librarians back to work next week. The New Democrats denied to debate the bill on Friday afternoon, setting up weekend sessions at Queen’s Park where it could clear third reading and receive royal assent by the end of Sunday.
If the legislation is passed as expected, Confederation College president Jim Madder said faculty would return to work on Monday with students resuming their studies on Tuesday.
“Our deans and our chairs have really been working on different scenarios for different programs. Many of them are very similar. We’d like to come back with the same workload for faculty, the same workload for students,” Madder said.
“It can’t occur in all programs but lots of discussions with the faculty involved in each program to make sure it’s going to work. Obviously, the dates have changed. Our registrar has proposed a whole series of rolling those dates forward.”
The strike at the province’s 24 public colleges began on Oct. 16 and has extended to become the longest college strike in Ontario history. As the strike has progressed, students have grown increasingly concerned about how the colleges would make up for the lost time.
Madder said once classes resume they will continue until Dec. 22, which would account for the five lost weeks. There are no plans to condense the schedule to fit all the material in before the end of the calendar year, he added.
“They’ll come back to the first week they missed. It’s as if the semester just continues on from where the strike started,” Madder said. “We are going to have it the same length that we had it before and students will come back to the same timetable they had as well.”
The holiday break would be shortened to less than two weeks with students returning to class on Jan. 3 to finish the remaining weeks of the fall semester.
“Typically it’s two weeks so going from 14 days down to 11 days is not great but our discussions now are how can we finish the semester after that and ideally keep the winter break in there, for people’s sake and giving them a break from classes. We would really like to keep that and we’re working on that as well,” Madder said.
Bhavya Gokani, a student on campus Friday, said the uncertainty about when the semesters will transition is concerning.
“We are pretty much blind. We don’t know anything,” Gokani said. “I’m in my third semester and I have a placement in my fourth semester but I don’t know when I’m going to start that.”
Student Bailey Hoard said the prolonged uncertainty during the strike of when classes would resume made it challenging for those who had jobs in addition to their studies.
“Super busy,” she said of the past five weeks. “We were working a lot. We have talks about coming back and then we cut our (work) schedule and we’re off and then we have to ask for more shifts. It’s been super hard.”
In a media release issued Friday, the New Democrats conceded the back-to-work legislation will inevitably pass this weekend but vowed to extend debate.
“The NDP will force the parties to return to the house and give this bill, at least, its due diligence and debate,” party house leader Gilles Bisson said in a statement.
The Progressive Conservatives pledged their support to ending the strike, taking swipes at the NDP for its intentions to oppose and the Liberals for waiting until the end of the fifth week to intervene.
“We hope that all sides – regardless of partisan stripes – can put the political games aside. It is unfortunate that this strike will cause a ripple effect of issues for months to come, but let’s focus on the most important task at hand and get students back to class on Monday,” PC leader Patrick Brown said in a statement.
The back to work bill would force the workers to return to their jobs, prevent any future strikes or lockouts until a new collective bargaining agreement has been reached. The College Employer Council, which represents the institutions, and the Ontario Public Service Employees Union, which represents the faculty, would be required to agree upon a mediator-arbitrator within five days or one would be appointed by the Ministry of Labour to settle the dispute.
