College students return to class after province implements back to work legislation

Some 12,000 college students in northeastern Ontario will be back in the classroom Tuesday morning for the first time in over a month.

This after the provincial government legislated striking professors back to work after five weeks on the picketline

The labour dispute will now be settled by a arbitrator, but there are still hard feelings being carried onto campus.

• Ontario college students worried over condensed semester as 5-week strike ends

• Ontario college strike ends as back-to-work legislation passed

"It certainly seems to be so far. There's certainly some tension there and there are some issues that we certainly will need to resolve for us all to move forward," says John Patterson, a Canadore College professor is also the local union president.

Patterson, who has a sociology class to teach on the first day, says some of those tensions might melt away after the arbitrator draws up a new contract, but others could turn into long-term divisions.

"We've got a college system that is going in one direction. They want to run colleges like a business and faculty would like to see colleges as educational institutions. So it's a pretty wide gap in the way we view the system, so it's going to take some time for us to come together," he says. 

Unclear path moving forward

Frank Turco will be back in front of a mathematics class at Sault College Tuesday after wearing his union president hat for the last five weeks.

He says many professors haven't been briefed on how the courses will change due to the strike and "don't know how this plan is going to work."

"Basically we're going to add three weeks and we've been on strike for five," he says.

Northern College President Fred Gibbons is more optimistic about how smooth the transition will be. 

'A good start'

He says on Monday, faculty walked back onto campus together in a "solidarity march" and were greeted by administrators and support staff with handshakes and hugs.

"It was a good start. There were some smiles. It sort of broke the ice," he says.

"It's going to be early into the new year when people are starting to feel comfortable and putting the past five weeks behind them. We'll get there. We always do."

Gibbons says the strike could make it tougher for colleges to recruit students in the long run, especially given the union claims that most instructors are precarious workers without job security or benefits.

"It's unfortunate that some of the statements made during the labour disruption were made because they could potentially have long term implications, however I think the reality is this would have very little affect on students applying," says Gibbons.

The province is offering refunds for any students who drop out now due to the strike.

Each college is also to use any money saved during the work stoppage to help out students in need, but how exactly that will work is to be finalized in the coming days.

'Stressed out students'

Cambrian College has said that it saved over $2 million from not paying professors during the strike.

Gibbons says any money saved from professor salaries at Northern College has been spent on security and other expenses during the strike, as well as student counselling and supports for the coming weeks, but he says the college will still find a way to create the fund as ordered by the province.

Charles Pascal, a former college president who now teaches at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto, says every college will have a different atmosphere, but expects a rocky return to education for most teachers and students.

"You've got disgruntled and stressed out students. I think probably there's going to be an increase in the number of dropouts. You've got students in the class with angry and confused teachers," he says.