Over 1,000 Nova Scotia Community College faculty members, support staff one step closer to strike

The union representing more than 1,000 faculty members and professional support staff, such as librarians, counsellors, student advisers and registrars, at the Nova Scotia Community College has filed for conciliation.

Negotiations with the management of the college have been going on for six months, Susan Thompson Graham, lead negotiator for the Atlantic Academic Union and business faculty member at the Ivany campus, said in an interview on Tuesday.

The college has 14 campuses across Nova Scotia.

“We have had negotiations in the past that have gone about four years,” she said. “Those kinds of delays have just delayed them having to pay wage increases or making other changes, so we took a vote in the spring for a strike deadline. We got about 98.5 per cent of our members in favour of that strike deadline, we said we’re doing this in six months, many companies can do their negotiations in six months, there’s no reason for this to take any longer.”

Thompson Graham said the college was not happy with that stance, which created a deadline of Jan. 14, 2024. She said a last-minute meeting with college president Don Bureaux was fruitless.

“We filed for conciliation on Friday, we got to a point where we did tell our members that if we felt like we were making progress at the table we could go past the strike deadline, but not much passed because we didn’t want to lose the strategic leverage,” she said. “As of the 15th we said we would give them one more day of negotiations, to see what they came back with on some key issues, like wages and workload. They closed the door on a few key issues, like fair hiring and job security so we said we’re done.”

The union expects a conciliator will be appointed within two weeks.

“Faculty and professional support have unsustainable workloads,” union president Barbara Gillis said in a release. “Union members are dealing with greater workplace and classroom challenges without the necessary tools, time or college support to do their jobs safely and effectively. We are serving an ever-growing number of students dealing with mental health and learning challenges.”