STRIKE VOTE: Submit YOUR vote October 14-17th, 2025 for College Part Time Support!

 Our strike vote will be held from Tuesday, October 14th at 12pm through until Friday, October 17th at 3pm.

The vote will be conducted by the Ontario Labour Board and your unique voting credentials will be sent to your work or personal email, and will be conducted online or on the phone. This is a secret ballot vote and no one will know how you voted – including the employer.

You do not need to register to vote.

College support employees working Part-Time (including students, casuals and on contracts, and those on approved leaves of absence, long term disability, parental leaves,etc.), can vote on October 14th through to October 17th at 3pm.

If you are on recall and/or have an active grievance on file, you are eligible to vote.

Who are Part-Time Employees?

Article 2 of the Part-Time Collective Agreement describes Part-Time Support Staff as follows:

Regular Part-Time Employees

• Regular Part-Time Employees are employees employed in a continuous position of indefinite extent with regularly scheduled hours on a weekly basis.  Some Regular Part-Time employees may occupy less than twelve (12) month positions.

Casual Employees

• Casual Employees are those who work on a call-in basis and/or do not have regularly scheduled hours on a weekly basis.

Temporary Employees

• Temporary Employees are those who are employed to replace Regular Part-Time Employees on leave or who are employed for a period of up to nine (9) consecutive months, or such longer period as the College and the Local Union may agree.

Student Employees

• Student Employees are students who are occupying positions that are only made available to current students of the College.

Project of a Non-Recurring Kind Employees

• Project of a Non-Recurring Kind Employees are employees who are employed in projects of a non-recurring kind.

If you believe you should be entitled to vote and do not receive an email, please reach out to the OLRB Help Desk for voting credentials:

OLRB Help Desk Telephone:

• 416-326-7432 (English)
• 416-326-0313 (French)

Help Desk Hours:

• October 14 – 2:00 pm to 4:00 pm
• October 15 – 11:00 am to 1:00 pm
• October 16 – 11:00am to 1:00 pm
• October 17 – 9:30 am to 11:00 am

A strike mandate vote is a secret-ballot vote. The process gives your bargaining team, who are a group of your elected co-workers who will negotiate, the option to call a strike, if needed. More than 50 per cent of those voting must vote in favour of a strike for the members to be in a legal strike position, and go on strike if necessary. In our case, the vote is administered by the Ministry of Labour Relations.

The decision to give the Bargaining team a strike mandate comes from the membership – which includes all part-time college support workers. A strong strike mandate vote – ie. A strong majority voting “YES” –  with the highest participation possible gives your bargaining team more power at the bargaining table, to show the employer that workers are prepared to go on strike, if needed.

A high-participation strike mandate is a demonstration of our collective power. We have more power at the table when the employer knows that they aren’t just negotiating with a bargaining team, but that the entire membership of 10,000 members is behind their team.

In addition, we need a strike mandate before engaging in any job action – including a strike.

No. If the majority of those who vote, vote “yes” for a strike mandate, your bargaining team can call for a strike, if needed.

A strike is a last resort for leverage to achieve our demands and improve our collective working conditions. 

The answer is that we don’t know yet. There are a number of steps we would need to go through before calling a strike, and it will depend on the outcome of a meeting with the labour board that is scheduled for October 15th, 2025.

Earlier this year, your bargaining team signed a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) with the employer, where both parties agreed to meet with a mediator to help us find an agreement, and in return, neither of us would escalate (the union said it would not initiate a strike).

However, we don’t believe the employer is being reasonable. They have refused 23 of 25 proposed mediation dates, which would continue to delay bargaining unnecessarily. We will be discussing this with the labour board on October 15th, 2025. 

If you still have questions, join a Strike Vote Info Drop In session from 11am-3pm on from Tuesday, October 14th to Friday, October 17th. There will be a session every day with members of the bargaining team to answer your questions, so you have the information you need to vote.

Zoom link here.