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For media inquiries, please contact:Aidan McNally OPSEU/SEFPO Communications [email protected]
Over 23,000 Ontario college support staff take coordinated step towards strike action on Labour Day: “The future of our work is the future of student support.”
September 1, 2025
(Toronto, ON) – Support staff across Ontario’s 24 colleges, represented by OPSEU/SEFPO, united this Labour Day to take a coordinated step forward in the fight for the future of student support. 10,000 full-time college support staff will officially be on strike as of 12:01 a.m. on September 11, 2025 if a deal is not reached by the deadline. Today, the bargaining team representing 13,000 part-time college support staff also gave notice that part-time workers are seeking a province-wide strike vote this semester.“After twenty one full days of bargaining, we have yet to reach an agreement that meets our members’ top-line priority: job security,” said Christine Kelsey, chair of the full-time support bargaining team, and an assistive technologist at Algonquin College that has worked for 20 years supporting students with disabilities. “The future of our work is the future of student support on college campuses. After the strain that devastating job cuts have put on those supports, we need some guarantee that we can protect what’s left so students don’t fall through the cracks.”“For over 19 months, part-time support staff have been forced to work under an expired contract by an employer that is refusing to bargain,” said Sara McArthur Timofejew, a program support officer at Mohawk College and chair of the part-time support staff bargaining team. “We’ve been fighting for bottom-line items like paid sick days and a livable wage increase for a workforce that mostly makes minimum wage. It’s clear that we need to take this next step to bring serious negotiations back to the table.”“College support staff are the foundation of student experience across over 150 job classifications,” added Kelsey. “We represent members in accessibility support services and financial aid offices, dedicated support staff for Indigenous students, electricians and library technicians – amongst so many others.”Years of deliberate government underfunding and administrative mismanagement have led to one of the largest lay-offs in provincial history, with over 10,000 job cuts across the college system, as over 650 programs that Ontarians rely on to meet job market demands are suspended or cancelled. Recent headlines have also called into question the financial sustainability of campuses, such as Loyalist College in Belleville, where the most recent round of cuts will leave more college management outnumbering full-time instructors.“These are good, family-sustaining jobs leaving our communities when unemployment is at a record high in Ontario – especially small communities, where colleges are an economic hub,” said JP Hornick, President of OPSEU/SEFPO. “This is the moment when we have to fight for what’s left in our backyard for our future generations. Not just for those of our kids that want to stay, but also for those who will be forced to leave home to find an education.”Hornick notes that provincial grants once covered three-quarters of operating expenses when the college system was first engineered in 1967. Today, provincial grants cover less than a third, and have fallen roughly 30% over the last decade.“The question everyone should be asking is where are our tax dollars going, if not to protect local, practical education that can get young people and adults into the workforce?” added Hornick. “College administrators have run our campuses into the ground, and the provincial government has made everything but education their budgetary priority. If we don’t step up to save our colleges now, who will?”