Bargaining Bulletin 19
From January 6-7, 2025, your College Faculty bargaining team met with the College Employer Council (CEC) in non-binding mediation, in an effort to reach an agreement that protects faculty futures and safeguards quality education.Today, the parties signed a Memorandum of Agreement, with significant benefit gains, particularly for our most precarious members. Using the leverage of a historic strike mandate, faculty were able to compel the CEC to withdraw significant concessions. The parties have agreed to send all outstanding items to mediation-arbitration with Arbitrator William Kaplan. CAAT-A members have flexed our collective power in service of a better system. Back in October, nearly 80% of our members delivered a historic strike mandate – sending the strong message that faculty are prepared to strike to protect education. In the lead up to labour action, we began preparations to exercise that leverage.Binding arbitration is a process workers can utilize to resolve outstanding items from negotiations in front of an arbitrator. As arbitration involves a third-party arbitrator weighing both parties’ proposals to rule on a final agreement, it was essential to the team that harmful concessions proposed by the employer that would erode our working conditions were off the table. Sufficient progress was made today on key priorities to clear the way towards a fair deal.Our working conditions and students’ learning conditions are tied at the hip – and the CEC and the Colleges know that faculty are ready to stand up to protect both. As a result, we have seen more movement from the CEC in the past two (2) days than over the past six months.Despite progress at the table, Arbitrator Kaplan concluded that we had reached an impasse – necessitating the decision to send all outstanding items to mediation-arbitration. As we have learned in previous rounds, we are bargaining with an unyielding employer prepared to sacrifice faculty and student futures to protect their corporate agendaAt a time where students and workers are hurting from program and staffing cuts, what we’re seeing is the end game of the Ford government’s two-step agenda: starve our public colleges of public funds, and encourage reliance on price-gouged international tuition. College executives were more than happy to go along with an agenda that exploits students and workers alike. Now that this house of cards is coming down, their contingency plan is austerity. Already in 2021, the Auditor General said that the Ford government knew well what was happening in our colleges – and that the province had no long term strategy. The reality is that we need to fight on all fronts to save our colleges, not just at the bargaining table. Ontario remains dead last amongst the provinces for per-student funding. In the government’s own words, every $1 invested in post-secondary education has a $1.36 return for Ontario. Underfunding our colleges is against public interest — the social and economic drivers in our communities direly need investment, more than we need a new luxury spa in Toronto. Our sector’s stability is dependent on an overhauled funding model that treats our colleges like the public asset they are, not a cash-grab or a political pawn in federal immigration debates. Ontario’s colleges have a clear public mandate: to prepare students for their future, and to guarantee the economic health of our province. We are the teachers, librarians, and counsellors that bring students’ learning to life. Our employer, and provincial government, have demonstrated time and time again that they are ready to act against public interests. And time after time, workers will be the force that holds them to account.Solidarity,Your CAAT-A Bargaining Team:
Ravi Ramkissoonsingh, L242, Chair (he/him) Michelle Arbour, L125, Acting-Chair (she/her) Chad Croteau, L110 (he/him) Bob Delaney, L237 (he/him) Martin Lee, L415 (he/him) Sean Lougheed, L657 (he/him) Rebecca Ward, L732 (she/her)