Standing beside a fire in a steel drum is not where Lad Shaba wants to be spending his days, but that is the currently reality as the province's 24 public colleges are locked in a dispute with the over 12,000 college faculty members in Ontario. Classes have been cancelled indefinitely for over 500,000 students across the province since Monday.
Shaba is the OPSEU (Ontario Public Service Employees Union) local 653 President and a civil engineer. He has been teaching at Northern College for 24 years.
Regarding the reasoning for the strike, he said there is a big misconception out in the public.
"I'd like to say very loud and clear, it's not about money. People always think it's about money."
He talked about three major factors.
- Too many contract faculty members
- Lack of academic freedom
- Fairness
Shaba says 70 per cent of the faculty at Northern College is comprised of contract and part-time teachers. They are paid only for the hours they are in class. Time spent on preparing the courses, marking assignments, and answering student e-mails and calls are uncompensated. The trend has been steadily moving towards part-time teachers.
"We're asking them to slow that train down. Let's work towards, within four years, to maybe 50/50? I know part-timers are a reality, but this is now abuse of it," he said, adding that the current contract is 'piecemeal'.
The College Employer Council has stated that it cannot meet OPSEU's demands, because they are financially unsustainable given declining enrolment.
As Shaba and his colleagues picket at the vehicular entrances to Northern College's Porcupine campus, they are being honked at on a regular basis by passing motorists, seemingly showing their support for the faculty members.
The trend towards a majority of part-time instructors in Ontario's colleges can have detrimental effects to both faculty and students.
"It doesn't give us stability in education, because students can't find them (their part-time professors), because they have a job somewhere else."
Adding fuel to the fire, Shaba alleges that Northern College has tripled the number of management positions in the last four years.
"Seriously, I said the other day in Kirkland Lake that the second best thing to winning the lottery is to be a manager here, and I mean it. It's a job for life. Why don't we have contract managers? Why don't we have part-time managers?"
Regarding academic freedom, often times instructors are shut out of key decision making surrounding academic issues and course study. Those come from 'the top down' said Shaba.
"Even for some programs, they dictate the textbook you should use. Even though you're the expert. And with all due respect to the managers, many of them have never taught before, so how would they know what textbook I should have in my class? So we want to at least be at the table. We're not saying we're going to impose our will, at least let us into the discussion."
These striking Northern College faculty members say they will be picketing at the campus every day until the dispute is resolved. Andrew Autio for TimminsTodayHe said he believes the colleges are trying to 'freeze out' faculty members for a couple of weeks.
His advice for students is to sign the online petition, which currently has over 91,000 signatures and demands a tuition refund for each day missed due to the strike. Shaba feels that students have every right to ask for their money back.
"And I think they should put pressure on management to try and resolve this. They wanted the strike, we didn't. You can see that if we're off for two weeks, they save money on our wages."
While both sides maintain their rhetoric, it is ultimately the students who are feeling the biggest consequences of the strike.
"We love our students. I feel sad that it has come to this, but we've got to do what we've got to do, because our good working environment is their good learning environment."
Shaba said there are countless hours of work that part-time teachers must put into preparing a course and assisting students that go financially unrewarded.
"Our job isn't done at 4 o'clock. People can e-mail you at anytime. If I go home now, and a student has a problem and sends an e-mail, (I can't) say, 'Well, I'm closed'."
He said he hoped the strike would 'end today', but is cautiously optimistic.
"I hope they don't walk away from the bargaining table. I hope we can go back and meet next week and, for the sake of the students, try to resolve this."
