Negotiations for a new collective agreement between college faculty and Ontario’s 24 public colleges are expected to resume.
Word the resumption follows a Monday request to the province by the College Employer Council (CEC) for a conciliator after after mediation failed over a week ago.
The CEC accepted the request by OPSEU’s CAAT-A bargaining team to resume bargaining, a source told Et Cetera. Specific details, including when both bargaining teams will meet, haven’t been released.
The college’s bargaining team announced Monday that it applied for conciliation, seeking from the provincial government the appointment of a neutral third party to help resolve outstanding issues. This step is required before the union can be in a legal position to strike or the CEC can be in the legal position to lock out its faculty.
OPSEU’s CAAT-A team and the CEC entered mediated talks on Sept. 28 but it fell apart as the union was unwilling to negotiate, according to mediator Brian Keller.
“Many of the CAAT-A team’s remaining demands are highly aspirational and completely unrealistic,” Keller said in a report announcing the end of mediation.
He said prior to his appointment there were more than 350 items placed on the table for discussion by the union, and 14 by the CEC. The union bargaining team reduced the number of items to 150 following discussions with the mediator.
“The CAAT-A team claims to recognize that but has showed no willingness to sufficiently moderate its demands to give me any hope that further mediation at this stage could result in a negotiated agreement,” he wrote.
The union bargaining team denied allegations put forward by Keller, telling its members in an internal statement seen by Humber News that it aimed to “negotiate greater changes” that it says are “possible and necessary.”
Despite the bargaining teams accepting OPSEU’s suggestion to nominate Keller as the mediator for the talks, CAAT-A said it was concerned over Keller’s approach.
“In particular, we believe Mediator Keller’s conclusions about the proposals were arrived at on the basis of very little direct communication with the faculty bargaining team,” the union said in a prepared statement.
“Realistically, Mediator Keller’s position reflects that of the CEC and is a classic approach to collective bargaining: that the only changes possible in any round of negotiations are minor and few in number,” it said.
Next steps could include a union vote on a final proposal from the colleges.
If CAAT-A fails to approve an agreement, faculty could consider a strike vote.
A strike occurred the last time there was a collective agreement negotiation in the fall of 2017, knocking off track the education of hundreds of thousands of college students across Ontario.
When talks broke down then, a record-setting five-week strike took place that only ended when the then-Liberal government under Premier Kathleen Wynne legislated faculty back to work.