No new dates have been scheduled for talks, which remain at a standstill, four weeks into a strike by more than 10,000 support staff at Ontario’s public colleges.
Thursday marked the fourth week since workers represented by the Ontario Public Service Employees Union walked off the job without a deal from the College Employer Council.
Since then, talks have stuttered between the two sides, who appear diametrically opposed on a number of issues they both consider non-negotiable.
“There are no new bargaining dates set at this time,” the CEC, which bargains on behalf of Ontario’s 24 publicly-assisted colleges, told Global News.
The last day of mediation was Sept. 29, with no talks since then and apparently no plans to restart them.
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“We have been out on the line for just shy of a month. The situation is reaching a boiling point,” said Christine Kelsey, chair of the full-time support staff bargaining team.
“Students can’t access critical services we provide, including accessibility supports, and convocations are being cancelled. The semester is slipping away.”
The union said it is not a strike that the colleges can “wait out.”
Rotating pickets at colleges across the province have been used by the union to ratchet up the pressure as the strike has dragged on.
On Tuesday, for example, Conestoga College cancelled all in-person classes and activities on one of its campuses because of “large-scale” pickets.
Striking workers from across the Greater Toronto Area also rallied at Centennial College’s Progress campus in Toronto on Monday.
Similar co-ordinated actions took place across Ontario last week and saw Mohawk College in Hamilton and St. Clair College in Windsor, Ont., suspend in-person classes and activities at some campuses.
Early on, the two sides found themselves at odds over a request from the union for a pledge not to close or merge college campuses or reduce staff numbers. The request came after 18 months, during which time at least 8,000 college workers had been laid off and 600 programs closed.
The College Employer Council called the demands a “poison pill,” which it said it simply could not promise to the union and urged them to reconsider the demand.
Those requests appear to have eventually been dropped, but the union stood firm on contracting out services and restrictions on who can perform certain tasks.
— with files from The Canadian Press
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