College Strike- Week 4

Premier Kathleen Wynne was in Hamilton Tuesday where she was met by striking faculty from Mohawk College. They say they’ll reject their employers’ latest contract offer and accused Wynne of not doing enough to help.

“I’m not going to preempt a vote that needs to take into account the position of all of the members, so we’re going to let that process unfold.” Premier.

But their union is urging them to reject the latest contract offer calling the college employer council to come back to the bargaining table. This comes a day after the colleges’ bargaining team says the council had addressed all the demands of the faculty.

“We tabled an offer and council rather than continuing to negotiate came back and said here is a new offer our final offer, it has a whole slew on concessions that were intended to undermine the work we had done.” JP Hornick, OPSEU.

Faculty members were out walking the picket lines again today, the colleges have requested they return to work while the vote is being organized but they say they won’t agree to that.

The strike is now into its fourth week leaving about half a million students out of the classroom. Students are worried they won’t be able to complete the semester because of the strike and thousands have signed an online petition calling for a tuition refund. The colleges have been working on plans to save the semester.