Georgian College Owen Sound Campus (Photo by Nathan Shubert)
Thousands of full-time support staff at Ontario’s 24 publicly funded colleges are now on strike.
Georgian College issued a statement just after 1 a.m. this morning confirming about 465 of its support staff are part of the job action. Georgian operates seven campuses, including one in Owen Sound.
Classes for students are proceeding as scheduled, and all Georgian College campuses remain open.
“Faculty, librarians and counsellors are members of a different bargaining unit and are not on strike,” Georgian College says in a release.
The contract for full-time colleges support staff — who are represented by the Ontario Public Service Employees Union — expired on August 31.
The College Employer Council says it sent an “enhanced” offer to the union on Tuesday, but it was rejected.
“A complete ban on campus closures, college mergers and staff reductions could force colleges into bankruptcy,” CEC’s CEO Graham Lloyd says in a release. “CEC has repeatedly advised OPSEU that these types of demands simply can never be agreed to. They are more about broader political campaigns than the benefits we have proposed at the table for their members.”
OPSEU issued its own statement on negotiations yesterday: “We have yet to see anything on the table that protects members before they are laid off: including language that would keep our work in-house, keep colleges adequately staffed and open, or keep good jobs in our communities.”
Georgian’s Owen Sound campus is listed on OPSEU’s website as a “full-time” picket line location.
Picketing support staff workers were out on Thursday morning, with support from faculty members at the college.
“We’re just here to make sure we don’t lose more people, making sure we get a say at the table for items, like using AI appropriately not just randomly like it is in other areas,” explained Trevor, who is a full-time support staff member for the Centre for Marine Training and Research. “And just keeping us safe on our job sites.
He said that safety includes harassment by managers, which some support workers within the union have experienced.
He adds that many of the union members on the picket line are hoping to have minimal impact on Georgian students, saying that they’re fighting for job security to ensure that programs can be available to post-secondary students in the future.
“Unfortunately, it does affect them, and that’s making harder for us to be here today. But we’re also here for them, trying to protect the small communities, not just the large, but the small the community colleges like in Owen Sound, because others have lost so much that they’ve had closures. We’ve had closures.”