Part-time support staff decide to join OPSEU

St. Clair College unionization effort culmination of 14-year-long campaign

Part-time support staff at St. Clair College have voted to join the Ontario Public Service Employees Union.

The St. Clair employees were part of a provincewide vote that saw 84 per cent of the 20,000 parttime support staff at Ontario’s 24 community colleges vote to join the union.

“We’re overjoyed and ecstatic because this has been a longtime coming,” said Connie Collins, president of St. Clair’s support staff workers.

“It’s been a longtime coming. We’re looking forward to what this will lead to in the future.”

Collins said about 700 employees would be affected by the vote to join the union.

Between 100 and 200 are parttime faculty with the remaining being students employed as lifeguards, student tutors, wait staff at the St. Clair Centre for the Arts and in other areas.

Part-time employees are limited to working no more than 24 hours per week.

This week’s counting of the ballots, which were actually cast in June 2016, ends the legal wrangling between OPSEU and the College Employer Council.

“There’s been a lot of back and forth about what positions would be covered,” explained Collins of the delay. “I’m glad they were able to finally reach a consensus.”

The vote brings to an end a 14year organizing campaign by OPSEU that goes down as the largest in Canada’s labour history.

“(It’s) a magnificent victory for part-time college support staff and for all the people who worked hard for so many years to win union rights for them,” OPSEU president Warren (Smokey) Thomas said in a press release announcing the vote’s results.

Collins said two of the key issues driving the vote to unionize were job security and pay equity.

“A lot of part-time employees are doing the same work as full-time employees, excluding students, but they’re not being paid the same,” Collins said. “That was a large motivation for the vote, along with job security.

“Part-time employees are relying on four-month contracts at a time. Some have been on these contracts for five, 10 and 20 years.

“At any point these contracts can end.”

St. Clair’s student employees earn minimum wage while parttime employees earn between $15 and $30 an hour.

Collins said it isn’t clear yet when the process to begin putting together a new contract will begin.

The contract will be centrally bargained by OPSEU with the College Employer Council.

“I’m sure they’ll make reference to the full-time support staff contract,” Collins said. “There are many similar issues.

“We have central meetings (of local presidents) and I hear a lot of the same issues from across the province. I’m sure our concerns will be heard.”

Collins doesn’t expect the vote to unionize will change the cordial nature of the employees’ relationship with St. Clair College’s administration.

“We have good labour relations locally with the college,” Collins said. “We have an amazing president (Patti France) and I don’t foresee any issues locally coming out of this.”

St. Clair officials declined to comment on the vote’s results.