RACHEL YAGER
NEWS REPORTER

The Ontario Labour Relations Board (OLRB) has scheduled a strike vote for the Ontario college faculty’s union for Jan. 13.

Bargaining is set to continue in the meantime, said Orville Getz, president of Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU) Local 562, which represents Humber’s faculty.

Members of the union, including Humber’s faculty, will have the opportunity to vote for or against a strike.

Faculty have been working without a new contract since the old one expired on Aug. 31.

Negotiations have been ongoing but talks broke off again on Nov. 30.
The union came down in salary demands and management came up a little bit, Getz said.

College management proposed an eight per cent increase for four years and the union proposed 7.5 per cent for three years. “They wouldn’t accept that and that was basically it,” said Getz.

“Management is focusing their attention on the affordability of the contract,” said Getz.

Nancy Hood, vice-chair of the management bargaining team, said “The colleges remain committed to negotiating a settlement, but it has to be an affordable one.”

Hood said the union’s proposal will cost the colleges $218 million.

“The union’s proposals are just simply unaffordable,” she said.

Ted Montgomery, chair of the OPSEU negotiating team, said the union changed positions on staffing and workload, but management said the costs were still too high.

“We had a position on the table that said 75 per cent of teachers should be full time – they said that’s too expensive,” said Montgomery.

At the Nov. 30 meeting, management gave the union a list positions they wanted the union to withdraw from, said Montgomery.

“We certainly would be content to withdraw them, but there’s got to be some discussion,” he said.

“They’ll only talk about a very limited number and even then, their talk is the union has to give in to their position,” he said.

The union revised their position and asked the college to make all reasonable efforts to have as many full-timers as possible, he said.

The union and management will go back to the bargaining table to negotiate for two more days on Dec. 14 and Dec. 15, which may solve a number of things, said Getz.

“If it looks like we’re moving ahead with negotiations, we’ll probably go ahead and schedule some days in January for negotiations, which might preclude the strike vote then,” said Getz.

In March 2006 college faculty  went on strike for about three weeks.