After 20 year battle, part-time and sessional college faculty across Ontario join OPSEU/SEFPO in one of largest organizing drives in Canadian history
April 12, 2025
Toronto, ON – College faculty union leaders had much to celebrate around the historic table at the Ontario Labour Relations Board (OLRB) today. After a long day sorting through thousands of ballots, with 88% of ballot-casters voting in favour the union won the vote count: part-time and sessional faculty at all 24 of Ontario’s public colleges will join OPSEU/SEFPO. Alongside the union’s part-time college support drive in 2018, this marks one of the largest union organizing drives in Canadian history.“This is historic – after today, Ontario’s college system becomes wall-to-wall union,” said JP Hornick, President of OPSEU/SEFPO. “We’ve fought tooth and nail to get here. There was a time when part-time college workers were one the very few classifications legally excluded from unionizing in Canada.”Hornick refers to the protracted legal battle to secure the right for part-time workers to unionize. For over four decades following the college system’s establishment in 1965, part-time college workers in Ontario were prohibited from unionizing by the Colleges Collective Bargaining Act (CCBA). The ban was lifted following a 2007 Supreme Court of Canada decision recognizing collective bargaining as a constitutional right – forcing the province to amend the CCBA in 2008.“We represent over 45,000 college workers. 45,000 workers standing together wield a lot of power. 16,000 more joining them – well, that’s a hell of a lot more and a force to be reckoned with,” added Hornick. “The employer knows this, and it’s why they tried to run interference.”The historic organizing drive concluded in October 2017 with part-time faculty voting on union certification. In August 2024, the union received notice from the OLRB that contested ballot boxes were finally being unsealed. The formal vote count was scheduled to take place on April 11 and April 17, 2025, with the process concluding in a victory for workers well ahead of schedule. Pearline Lung, chair of the union’s faculty division, says that 71 per cent of faculty working in Ontario’s colleges are precariously employed, working without job security and little to no benefits. This moment, she says, paves the road not just to better working conditions, but also an expanded ability to fight growing precarity system-wide.“For far too long, the province has drained government funding for post-secondary education,” said Lung. “While college executives jumped at opportunities to turn a buck on price-gouging international tuition and deregulation.”“Colleges raked in record surpluses for years. How much did students, or workers, see of that? Precarity went up, and we’re seeing access to education go down – all while college CEOs collected sky-high salaries.”Last week, Global News released data demonstrating that the five highest-paid college presidents made an average of roughly $492,000 in 2024. Conestoga College’s President, John Tibbits, took home $636,106.70.“We’re coming for our fair share, and we’re coming for a better college system,” added Hornick. “In contract negotiations, as in politics, you win what you have the power to fight for. And in terms of building power, today is a game-changer.”