As the Ontario college teachers’ strike enters its third week, the local Ontario Public Service Employee Union (OPSEU) president says the faculty walking the picket line at Northern College campuses remain strong.
The strike by full-time faculty at Ontario’s 24 public colleges started Oct. 16.
Lad Shaba, the OPSEU local 653 president, is also a teacher at Northern College and says the spirits on the picket line are “very high.”
While the main factors for the striking faculty remain the same – including lack of academic freedom, and fairness – the key issue for Shaba is the contract and part-time faculty members.
He contends that 70 per cent of the faculty at Northern College are contract and part-time, however Northern College president and CEO Fred Gibbons disagrees.
“Northern College has never had a staffing ratio of 30 per cent full-time and 70 per cent part-time faculty, as measured by teaching hours in the classroom,” said Gibbons in a statement. “One cannot use a simple head count to establish ratios. Many of our non-full-time faculty choose to only teach one or two courses.”
At the college, Gibbons says the majority of part-time faculty “are business owners, nurses, veterinarians, lawyers, police officers, firefighters, etc., all of whom bring specialized industry specific expertise into our classrooms.”
Shaba would like to see a guideline established and work towards a 50/50 ratio of full-time and part-time faculty.
For academic freedom, when the strike started Shaba told TimminsToday.com that instructors are often shut out of key decision making for academic issues and course study.
According to Gibbons, however, faculty “are very much part of the whole process.”
“In practice, faculty members prepare their course outlines and discuss them with their academic manager,” said Gibbons. “Teaching and other workload assignments are discussed with their academic managers within the parameters of articles within the collective agreement, which govern and define faculty workloads; and textbooks are selected and adopted by faculty members as part of the course outline approval process which is mutually agreed to.”
As the strike goes on, Shaba believes the school year is in jeopardy.
Normally, he said they would teach until mid-December.
“The way it is now there’s no way it could be fit in the semester,” he said.
Northern College marketing and communications officer Melanie Watson said “no Ontario college student has ever lost their year because of a work stoppage. Colleges have provided contingency plans to help students during the strike and semester completion plans are in place following the work stoppage.”
