TORONTO – The Ontario Public Service Employees Union will
file an application with the Ontario Labour Relations Board (OLRB) today to
represent more than 12,500 part-time and sessional employees working at 24
community colleges across Ontario.
“This application covers more workers than any application
for certification by any trade union in Ontario history,” said Warren
(Smokey) Thomas. “We are excited at the prospect of representing college
part-timers and sessionals, and we are asking the Labour Relations Board to
order a certification vote as soon as possible.”
OPSEU represents more than 16,000 full-time support staff
and faculty in the colleges, but in the past part-timers and sessionals had
been legally barred from unionization by an obscure section of the
Colleges Collective Bargaining Act (CCBA).
In 2007, as the union was pressuring the province to change
the CCBA, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that collective bargaining is a
protected right under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Weeks
later, the McGuinty government announced its intention to recognize
bargaining rights for the excluded college workers and asked the Chair of
the Ontario Labour Relations Board to review the CCBA.
In January 2008, OLRB Chair Kevin Whitaker recommended that
“Part-time employees should be immediately granted the right to unionize.”
“All the parties with an interest in this issue have
publicly voiced their support for bargaining rights for part-timers and
sessionals,” said Roger Couvrette, president of the provincial organization
of college part-timers and sessionals and a driving force behind the OPSEU
campaign. “It’s time to make those rights real. Close to 7,000 hardworking
Ontarians have signed union cards with OPSEU. We are knocking on a door that
has been closed to us for too long, and we want in.
“An immediate certification vote is the key that will open
the door to collective bargaining.”
