Jennifer Downham has been involved in several strike actions during her 36 years of working at the Haliburton School of Art + Design (HSAD), but she feels this latest one, launched Sept. 11, is different.
More than 10,000 full-time college support workers are striking across Ontario, impacting operations at 24 publicly-funded institutions. Here in Haliburton, about 15 HSAD support staffers are picketing daily off-campus on College Drive. They share a united voice, Downham said.
“This is about protecting schools, protecting local education,” Downham told The Highlander during a Sept. 16 interview. “Over the last couple of years, there has been over 10,000 people laid off [and 650 program cancellations] across Ontario. Things are shifting… I’m worried about the future of public post-secondary education.”
The Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU), representing the workers, claims provincial funding for colleges has dropped 30 per cent since 2013/2014. It further claims that per-student funding in Ontario is the lowest in Canada, at approximately 56 per cent of the national average.
JP Hornick, president of OPSEU/SEFPO, believes this is a “government-led agenda to systematically defund Ontario colleges.”
They claim investments in non-college private training programs, through the province’s Skills Development Fund, has increased by 800 per cent since 2020, with $2.5 billion spent thus far and another $1 billion committed over the next three years.
Full-time support staffers saw their contracts expire Aug. 31. OPSEU Local 351 president Marcia Steeves said, provincially, 77 per cent of employees voted in favour of a strike mandate last month. Across Fleming College, which employees 250 support staff, including 15 at HSAD, 79.8 per cent were in favour of striking.
“This is a fight not just for an improved contract – it is about the future of student supports at colleges across Ontario,” Steeves added.
“This is a fight not just for an improved contract – it is about the future of student supports at colleges across Ontario,” Steeves added.
Since 2020, she confirmed HSAD had lost four full-time staffers, dropping from seven academic support roles to three.
Downham was one of 29 Fleming employees to be informed in July that their positions were being terminated. A coordinator for the arts certificate program, her last day is Oct. 9, but there’s no guarantee she’ll be back on campus before then.
Joining HSAD when courses were run out of the old schoolhouse in Haliburton village, Downham said she’s watched the school blossom and grow in her three-plus decades of employment but is now fearful for its future.
“It would be like one of my children being harmed in some way [if it were to close]. It breaks my heart to see the way things are going… the arts are woven into the fabric of this community and HSAD plays a major role in that.
“I feel like if we don’t do something soon, our public college system is going to completely dissolve,” Downham said.
A Fleming College spokesperson said classes at HSAD are continuing to run as scheduled, though would not comment on the strike action.
Deal ‘not close’
The College Employer Council (CEC) is ready to negotiate, its CEO Graham Lloyd said, though he has labelled the union’s response to the latest offers “unacceptable.”
He told The Highlander the CEC had offered a package totalling $145 million in increased benefits over three years, but that the union’s counter would set colleges back about $400 million – at a time when, he claims, enrollments are down by about 50 per cent compared to 2023/24.
The offer includes a two per cent wage increase per year; a 75 per cent increase in on-call premiums; enhanced vision and hearing benefits; improvements to job security from AI; and 50 per cent increase to severance packages for employees laid off due to the current financial crisis.
OPSEU is asking that CEC commits, in the contract, to maintaining all existing college campuses for the next three years and prohibit any college merger or staff layoffs.
After failing to make any headway Sept. 16, the fifth day of the strike, Lloyd said the union needs to reassess its position if a deal is to be reached.
“Four of their demands, we’ve told them, we could never accept,” Lloyd said. “We don’t know where we’ll be in three years. It’d be fiscally imprudent to be able to guarantee that.
“No college wants to be in this position, but there’s a reality that, for reasons outside the college’s control, they’ve had massive cutbacks and that has had an impact,” Lloyd added, blaming the federal government’s limitations on international student for the current financial predicament.
With no agreement in sight, he suggested the best alternative is going to third-party arbitration – saying that was an effective way of striking a new three-year deal with academic staff in June.
“Spend a few days with a mediator and then, if we still can’t come to a resolution, they will act as an arbitrator and impose [a new contract],” Lloyd said.
