Debora Sardaneta
News Reporter

Part-time college teachers  and workers in Ontario now have the right to collective bargaining.
The new Colleges Collective Bargaining Act 2008, passed earlier this month, gives part-time and seasonal college workers the right to join a union for the first time in Ontario in over 30 years.
“I think that it will improve the quality of education," said Maureen Wall, Humber College faculty union president. “The fact that they now have access to  collective bargaining is a step in the right direction. I think, ideally, it will help to create a much more consistent, continuous faculty.”
Roger Couvrette, president of the part-time workers’ organization, said this passage of legislation signals the dawn of a new era.
“It will set standards not only for the workers, but standards that will improve the quality of education for students,” Couvrette said.
The part-time support staff also includes working students. There are currently 5,000 working students within colleges who will benefit.
“Today the majority of the college system is made up of part-time teachers and support staff, which makes it important to include them as the bargaining unit,” Couvrette said. “The last legislation was passed in 1975, when it didn’t seem important to include part-timers, today it’s radically different. This legislation rights a historical wrong.”
According to the full-time faculty union, last semester, almost 60 per cent of Humber faculty was part-time, partial load, or seasonal.
The fact that these faculty now have the right to collective bargaining should give more stability, said Paul Michaud, a computer engineering teacher at Humber.
“This will provide more stable working conditions, and more stable teachers,” he said. “I’m very much in favour of it. I think that it’s a long time coming.”
Vice-president of the part-time workers’ organization, Candy Lindsay, said they are now working on the next steps.
“The next step is going to colleges, doing meetings, letting workers know about bill 90 and that it’s still alive,” she said.
The Ontario Public Service Employees Union led the campaign for the fight for collective bargaining rights and organized the 17,000 part-timers, on 24 college campuses.
This was done in order  to provide support when the Organization of Part-time and Seasonal Employees of the Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology was formed last November.
Ontario was the only province in Canada where there wasn’t a law that allowed college teachers and workers to be unionized.