Less than a week before faculty at Ontario's 24 public colleges participate in a strike vote, their bargaining team and the College Employer Council meet with a conciliator.
Talks between the two sides date back to July, but so far, they have been stuck on job security and workload.
The College Employer Council said the OPSEU/SEFPO College Faculty Bargaining Team has made more than 200 demands, which would "reduce the time faculty spend with students and are estimated to have a significant cost to the college sector."
Acting chair of the bargaining team Michelle Arbour said that system-wide, the college sector's surplus has grown to $1-billion on top of the $1.3-billion in provincial investment.
Complicating talks, current Immigration, Refugee, and Citizenship Canada changes could cost the sector more than $3-billion over the next two years.
"Faculty are the backbone of the college sector and deserve to be recognized for their hard work and dedication to students," said Chair of the Management Bargaining Team, Doctor Laurie Rancourt. "That's why the CEC has tabled breakthrough proposals based on data from the Flaherty workload taskforce report, adding mode of delivery into the workload formula, and an increase in preparation and evaluation time for certain modes and additionally, increases to wages and benefits."
Faculty have long complained about workload. The union has said they only have 5 minutes and 24 seconds a week for student evaluation, a benchmark that hasn't changed in 39 years.
The council said other demands include hiring 50 per cent more full-time teachers and 233 per cent more full-time counsellors and librarians. It also demanded a four-hour reduction in the maximum assigned time to teach each week, twice as many professional development days, and a guaranteed six weeks of self-directed non-teaching time each year.
"While we remain optimistic that conciliation can help us find a path forward, we are also aware the union bargaining team has been telling its members it needs a strike mandate for months, with some locals preparing even before bargaining began in mid-July," said the council's CEO Graham Lloyd. "The students and the college system do not need a strike to address the faculty bargaining team's demands. We urge all academic employees to review both sets of proposals and get informed before voting in the strike vote next week."
The strike vote starts at noon on October 15 and ends on October 17 at 3 p.m.
Proposals and demands from each side in the dispute are on the council's website.