The end could be near for bargain talks between the province and Ontario college teachers.
Faculty members will vote Tuesday evening on whether to ratify a tentative agreement that was reached back in August.
The new deal would include a wage increase of 4.5 percent over the next three years and shorten the probationary period for new faculty members. Despite that, Darryl Bedford, the president of the OPSEU Local 110 (the union representing Fanshawe College faculty members) says the negotiation is more about the quality of education than about the money.
“The monetary people understand what the government said, and our tentative agreement is in line with what post-secondary institutions are receiving right now,” says Bedford.
Still, Bedford acknowledges that there’s more progress to be made in future negotiations.
“With part-time and sessional faculty, they’re very poorly paid in comparison to the unionized faculty,” Bedford says. “So that’s something that we’d really like to address, because for them, money is a huge issue.”
The proposed agreement is also the first that accounts for new technology being used in the classroom.