It’s time to legislate college teachers back to the classroom

Enough, already. It’s time for the provincial government to step in and end the college strike.

Across Ontario, 12,000 college teachers in the Ontario Public Service Employees Union went on strike nearly four weeks ago.

It has been decided that they’ll get to vote on the employer’s offer, but the electronic vote won’t happen until the middle of next week.

Even if the employees vote in favour of that offer — which is no sure thing, because the union opposes it — it would mean a fiveweek-long disruption of classes.

How is that going to be made up without undue hardship to the students?

Remember, this isn’t university where students can keep up with their reading and assignments.

College students, more often than university students, learn by doing. For many, that means learning to operate specific equipment that’s inaccessible right now behind the picket lines. They need time to learn these skills. What’s the plan? Conestoga College communications director Brenda Cassidy said fall term could be extended a week, ending Dec. 22 instead of Dec. 15.

The college’s schedule currently starts the winter term on Jan. 8 but Cassidy said fall classes could continue Jan. 2 and run until later in January.

Winter term could start as late as Jan. 22 and still finish by the end of April, saving students an extra month of paying rent and still giving them the chance of being able to find summer jobs.

But by my calculations, that could only happen a) if there were no break between fall and winter term and b) if students also sacrificed their traditional weeklong break in the middle of winter term, in which they get caught up on their reading and assignments and seek tutoring to help with areas of study they find difficult.

It’s impractical to suggest there would be no break between fall and winter. Teachers and administrators need a certain amount of time to evaluate students and get them set up for the next term. If you don’t pass your courses in the fall, you shouldn’t be moving on to the next class in the winter.

However you slice it, moving the strike into a fifth week is moving it into territory where students’ education gets seriously compromised.

Will the government legislate the faculty back to work while they continue to bargain? Not yet.

“My hope is that the vote will take place quickly and we will be able to take the next steps to get kids back into school,” said Pre-

mier Kathleen Wynne this week.

“I’m not going to pre-empt a vote that needs to take into account the position of all of the members. So we’re going to let that process unfold.”

Kitchener Centre MPP Daiene Vernile said she understands that “there’s a great deal of frustration,” especially for students.

But she also added that the government encourages both parties to return to the bargaining table.

Lana-Lee Hardacre, president of the local union branch, told me there is international interest in this strike, because one of the key issues is “precarious” work.

Who decides whether fulltime unionized employees are teaching the class rather than part-timers on contracts? How do you balance the employer’s need for flexibility with the worker’s need for security?

This is a huge issue in our global economy. It’s not going to be solved in a week.

Education, meanwhile, is a public service. If we want to maintain public trust in it, the government should get the teachers back in the classrooms on Monday. The discussion doesn’t have to end just because the strike does.