Academic staff at the University of Sudbury have voted 100 per cent in favour of strike action to achieve bargaining goals.

“This message from the membership should help produce meaningful bargaining with the university and a fair settlement,” said local president Réal Fillion.

Indications from the union are that the parties will hold mediation talks Jan. 19. “The union bargaining team is entering mediation with a mandate for change,” Fillion said. “The board of this university has assumed for too long that faculty will work for wages far below those earned by colleagues on the same campus, and in the same programs in some cases.

“From the time we became a union three years ago, there has been little real change in our working conditions. It is time to move on. It is time to finalize a contract.”

Conciliation lasted two days in late November “with no evidence shown to the union of a desire for a fair settlement,” Fillion said.

Among the issues still on the table are salaries, benefits, workload equity, including the provision of teaching assistants, and limits on the use of limited-term contracts.

The union will be in a legal strike position Jan. 23.

The academic staff at Sudbury are a separate certified bargaining unit of 36 full and part-time teachers and librarians and are members of Laurentian University Faculty Association.