Several thousand part-time college workers in Ontario have organized a movement to fight for the same rights as their university colleagues.

The movement is spearheaded by Roger Couvrette, a part-time English teacher at Algonquin College and president of the newly-formed Organization of Part-time and Sessional Employees of the Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology.

Couvrette said he wants to amend a law that denies part-time college workers the right to form a union and engage in collective bargaining. These rights are denied under the Colleges Collective Bargaining Act, implemented in 1975.

Couvrette said that because of this law part-time workers are forced to work overtime without pay, receive no vacation pay or wages on statutory holidays, receive no benefits, and face constant “job insecurity.”

“We’re a source of cheap labour,” said Couvrette. “We get paid a fraction of full-time workers’ wages.”

The organization Couvrette helped found first officially met in November 2006 with representatives from all 24 of Ontario’s colleges. Their aim is to amend the law and grant union rights to Ontario’s 17,000 part-time college workers, who outnumber full-time employees by almost 2,000.

Even in such large numbers, part-time staff work in worse conditions than full-timers, and sometimes without offices or phones where students can contact them, said David Cox, communications officer for the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU).

OPSEU is an organization that supports amending the bargaining act.

“They’re wheeling their office behind them on a cart,” said Cox, adding that without even having parking spots at the college, staff are unavailable after classes “because their meters have run out.”

Couvrette and Cox agreed that changing the act would not only benefit workers, but improve quality of education.

Without job security, college workers get “discouraged, disheartened, disillusioned, [and] they leave,” said Couvrette, calling the cycle continuous and unfair for students.

“It’s a little bit like Boxing Day at Best Buy,” said Couvrette. “It’s a zoo.”

Couvrette’s organization has attracted the attention of New Democrat Party member Rosario Marchese, a Toronto MPP. Marchese supports part-time workers and recently introduced a private members’ bill to amend the act.

“There doesn’t appear to be too much pick up from the Liberal backbenchers or Conservative government,” said Marchese.

He said that because college workers are unable to organize, they cannot demand benefits and “that seems to suit the government just fine.”

Marchese also said there has been a 53 per cent increase in college enrolment during the last decade.

But funding from the government has stayed the same, making Ontario ninth out of 10 provinces in terms of provincial funding for full-time college students.

This means less money is being offered per student, and that colleges in Ontario are increasingly forced to hire part-time workers because their costs are much lower than hiring unionized, full-time staff, said Marchese.

These issues were not important when the act was first passed in 1975 because there were far fewer part-time employees, Couvrette said.

“It sits in the kind of category of a historical wrong. But it has just dragged on and on,” he said.