Ontarians are just a few days away from finding out if college students will have class on Friday, or for the rest of the semester.
"I have not gone to one class in person and I'm supposed to graduate in April and with the pandemic and now a strike happening, which we've kind of known since December that was happening, it's very overwhelming," said Cambrian College student Shawna Peron.
Peron, like many college students, is worried about the strike deadline OPSEU has set for Friday morning at 12:01 a.m.
Due to the pandemic, she's watched a lot of her college career pass her by, and is now at risk of losing out on employment opportunities if the semester is extended.
"Everyone's really scared, they're not sure if they're going to be able to graduate and a lot of people are angry because we haven't been able to go in-person," Peron said.
"I know there are folks who wanted to graduate this April, now they're going to sitting into May," said post-graduate student Angelo Embuldeniya.
"What about the commitments made to potential employers?"
Embuldeniya recently graduated from human resources and was scheduled to take IT over the spring semester. A strike could set him right back.
An international student, he said this hurts both domestic and international students on campus.
"It's extremely disappointing to be honest, it's not easy for anyone including myself to be saying or pointing fingers," he said.
"Our timelines for graduation are getting impacted, our plans with the spring semester are all just getting pushed back. It comes back to the point that this could have all been avoided."
Cambrian student council president Lynn Courville issued a statement to CTV News writing in part:
"Students are facing many challenges and have many concerns but some of the most pressing are around the fear that this strike will have the same impacts and last just as long as the strike in 2017. This would leave students feeling unprepared for the workforce due to an incomplete year and a decrease in the quality of their education. They worry that due to this strike they will see an impact to the quality of education that they paid for with no reimbursement of tuition."
CTV News also reached out to Cambrian College and was referred to the College Employer Council for further comment.
The College Employer Council said it is ready to bargain and has asked the union to withdraw the threat of a strike and return to the table.
Asked for binding arbitration
The union, however, said they've been negotiating in good faith and have asked for binding arbitration with a neutral party.
The president of OPSEU local 655 Neil Shyminsky said they've done everything they can to avoid a strike. The employer is leaving them with no other option.
"This has been more than half a year in the making and we wouldn't be resorting to a strike unless we had no options left," Shyminsky said.
He said one of the biggest sticking points for his members has been the workload, which hasn't been addressed in contract talks in nearly four decades.
And while nothing contractually has changed, their workload has grown exponentially in particular since the start of COVID-19.
"People are burning out, at one point I had, I surveyed our membership and found a quarter of our people were considering stress leave," said Shyminsky.
He said the strike may seem very sudden, but in fact this has been happening for quite some time.
"We've been in a work-to-rule situation for three months, we've been without a collective agreement for two-and-a-half months before that so this has ratcheted up very slowly," he said.
"There are a lot of factors and the election is one of them. We know that a lot of these prolonged strikes are settled by the government stepping in and legislating us back to work. If there is no government in place because of an election, then we're also worried that our employer is missing someone at the top that is giving them direction."
OPSEU represents professors, instructors, librarians, counsellors including more than 300 full and part-time members at Sudbury's Cambrian College.
