The will of striking Fanshawe College faculty members continues to burn strong, despite cold rainy weather during a rally outside the college’s downtown core campus.
“Are we tired? Yeah. A little cold? Absolutely,” said Joseph Bastien, a full-time professor walking the picket line outside the Centre for Digital Performance Arts in London Tuesday afternoon.
“But I don’t feel like anybody has lost any enthusiasm into week two. I think we, if anything, are realizing that while we’re out here trying to demonstrate and trying to educate, the administration isn’t going to the table.”
More than 12,000 college staff members have been on strike across the province for nine days now and there are still no talks scheduled between OPSEU and the College Employer Council.
But according to OPSEU local 110 President Darryl Bedford, the silence has nothing to do with the union.
“We’re willing to go back to the table. And we’re not hearing that same message from the council,” he said.
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He admits it’s frustrating and the local union chapter is planning a rally at Victoria Park starting at 11:30 a.m. on Thursday. At 1 p.m. members and supporters will march to the constituency office of London North Centre MPP Deb Matthews.
“Now, she probably won’t be there,” said Bedford.
“But we’ll deliver our message, and maybe she’ll hear it all the way from here to Toronto. No more stalling, she is the minister of advanced education and skills development, she’s not an innocent bystander in this.”
Bedford says the government is able to make a difference and can bring the College Employer Council back to the table.
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Outside the performance arts building, and across the street from the college’s new downtown campus on Dundas Street, some students dropped by to work on assignments and to say hi to their teachers.
“It was more or less just ‘hey, how are you doing — no talk about the school or anything at all,” said third-year video game design and development student Brittany Rowes.
She says being unable to talk to teachers she has a positive relationship with, is disheartening.
“We’re going into the biggest part of our final right now. We really wanted feedback going forward and we won’t get that.”
Vlad Beloglazov is a second-year international student in the same program, from Russia. It’s the first time he’s encountered a strike.
“I understand the problem of both sides and I really try to support my teachers,” he told AM980.
But a week of education lost has a big impact.
“I came to Canada and I had really big dreams that it will be wonderful time for me. And it was. But now, all our teachers can’t talk with us, read our mail. It’s a big problem, and it’s not what I expected.”
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