Students calm as threat of strike nears at Conestoga College

Faculty at seven of college’s campuses may walk on Monday

KITCHENER — Calm carried the drizzly day on Conestoga’s Doon campus on Wednesday.

Maybe a provincewide strike by 12,000 unionized faculty will hit Ontario’s 24 public colleges, including Conestoga, on Monday morning. Maybe it won’t.

Umbrellas and shrugs over a potentially disruptive strike were commonplace.

“I think it’ll be fine,” said Adam Piazza, a business fundamentals student from Waterloo. “They’ll figure something out.” But contract talks between the colleges and the Ontario Public Service Employees Union definitely broke down on Tuesday, 10 days after the previous contract expired.

The union has set a strike deadline of 12:01 a.m. on Oct. 16.

“I’m not too worried,” said Amy Lintack, a respiratory therapy student from Milton.

“My profs have been really, like supportive and they said they’re not too worried so just act as if nothing is going to happen.”

Conestoga has 782 faculty who are OPSEU members at campuses in Kitchener, Waterloo, Cambridge, Guelph, Stratford, Brantford and Ingersoll.

It has nearly 14,000 full-time students.

Will classes continue should faculty walk off the job next week?

“We’re still working on the details of how a strike would impact delivery of programs and services,” Conestoga spokesperson Brenda Cassidy said in an email to The Record on Wednesday.

The student union, Conestoga Students Inc., also had no clear answer for what might happen should a faculty strike occur.

“A lot of it is still question marks,” student union president Aimee Calma said on Wednesday morning, noting it’ll be up to the institution to set strike protocol.

“From our side of it, our services will still be moving forward, with the exception of our shuttle service. And that’s only because, if there is a picket line, both for the safety of our drivers and our students, we don’t want to be crossing it back and forth with our shuttle.”

Calma said students are concerned as a possible strike nears, even though both sides say a student has never lost a year due to a labour disruption in 50 years of the college system.

There have been three strikes in the past, the last coming in 2006. It lasted three weeks.

The colleges say they’ve offered a 7.5 per cent raise over four years. The union cites the growing use of contract faculty as a key issue.

If there is a strike, getting through the first week will be an initial hurdle. A fall reading week will pause a number of programs from Oct. 23 to 27. Programs in the schools of Engineering and Information Technology, and Trades and Apprenticeship are not part of the reading week.

Already, the college has cancelled a College Fair set for Tuesday on the Doon campus. It would have provided an opportunity to learn about college services and programs.

And should a work stoppage halt some classes, there might be one positive effect.

“It’ll be good in a way for students,” said Nicholas Pavlovic, an electrical engineering student from Mississauga. “It’ll be more of a reliever or extra break.”