March 16, 2006
Minister calls a meeting as 5,000 march for quality
Higher
education Minister Chris Bentley has called OPSEU and the employer to
a meeting Friday in a bid to break the logjam that is keeping 9,100
Ontario college faculty on the picket line.
Union bargaining team chair Ted
Montgomery learned of the invitation shortly before over 5,000
strikers and supporters swarmed downtown Toronto for a major rally.
“It’s good news,”
Montgomery said. “It isn’t a
settlement yet, but it’s a very important step in the
right direction. We’ve been pressing the
minister, and the premier, to get involved in this bargaining. It’s
about time they did. We’re pleased. We will be there tomorrow, happy
to talk to the minister, and to get some negotiations moving from
management’s side.”
Click here for a full transcript of Montgomery’s remarks to
the rally.
Paddy Musson, president of OPSEU Local
110 (Fanshawe College faculty) and co-coordinator of the union’s
provincial strike committee, called on strikers to stay the course.
“We must stay on the message that we
have to give to all the politicians,” she said. “In order to do our
jobs, we need smaller classes, we need more time with our students,
and we need more teachers to be able to deliver the quality that the
students here, and the students across the province, deserve from us.”
Musson scoffed at a management plan,
announced this week, to guarantee that students would not lose their
semester. Musson called it “play teaching.”
“I think they did us a great favour,”
she said. “I think that coming out with such a clearly untenable plan,
such a screwball plan, helped to get the Minister to call the parties
together.”
The rally at Yonge-Dundas Square
marched up Bay Street to the high-rise headquarters of the Ministry of
Training, College, and Universities. The mood was joyous, raucous, and
musical as The Samba Squad, a 16-piece drum, ensemble, led the way.
George Hewison’s Rank ‘N’ File Band and
singer Marnie Niemi also performed for the rally and march.
“It’s good news,”
Montgomery said. “It isn’t a settlement yet, but it’s a very
important step in the right direction." |
Paddy Musson, president of OPSEU
Local 110 (Fanshawe College faculty) and co-coordinator of the
union’s provincial strike committee, called on strikers to stay
the course. |
Photo Gallery from March 16th Rally
