The Ontario Public Service Employees Union has kicked off a campaign to change the law that bars part-time college staff from unionizing.

“Ontario is the only province in Canada where it is against the law for part-time college employees to join a union,” said OPSEU president Leah Casselman “It’s shocking that such a basic right is not recognized in our colleges.”

Casselman said Premier Dalton McGuinty will face protests in as many as 60 communities in the 2007 provincial election campaign unless the current law is scrapped.

“I’m talking about Mr. McGuinty’s big issue — post-secondary education, he wants it to be one of his flagship issues,” Casselman said.

Improving post-secondary education is a major part of the McGuinty government’s agenda and will likely be a prominent issue the Liberals raise in seeking re-election.

However, Chris Bentley, the minister responsible for training, colleges and universities, said in an interview that the government isn’t considering changing the law to allow part-time college staff to unionize.

Ontario NDP education critic Rosario Marchese tabled a private member’s bill in the legislature in October that would delete clauses in the current law that deny part-timers the right to union recognition.

“It’s a disgrace that staff at any post-secondary institution in Canada would be denied the right to be represented by a union,” said CAUT executive director James Turk. “CAUT will do everything in its power to assist OPSEU in correcting this injustice.”

Turk said the overwhelming majority of university and college staff are unionized around the country and that unionization has been important in protecting the quality of Canada’s post-secondary education system.

Denying Rights is Wrong: Ontario colleges exploit more than 16,000 part-time workers who are barred by Ontario law from unionizing. Part-timers are treated as a disposable workforce, forced to subsist on short-term, temporary, underpaid jobs. They have no job security. They have few or no benefits. Sometimes they even have to work for free.