The faculty association at the new Northern Ontario School of Medicine has been certified by the labour board to represent the school’s full-time academic staff.

NOSMFA was handed an interim certificate earlier this year, recognizing a 20-member bargaining unit that includes non-clinical faculty, librarians, counsellors and curriculum instructional designers.

CAUT assistant executive director Peter Simpson said the certificate was issued following months of intense organizing on the school’s main campuses in Sudbury and Thunder Bay and a gruelling day of hearings before the Ontario Labour Relations Board.

“This was one of the most adversarial certification processes CAUT has been involved in,” said Simpson, who attended the board hearings on behalf of CAUT. “The employer made it clear from the beginning that there was tremendous hostility to any attempt to organize academic staff, whether in the form of an association or a union. The employer never did voluntarily recognize the association prior to the certification drive.”

NOSMFA will now concentrate on working with the employer to try and reach an agreement on a first contract, he said.

The Northern Ontario School of Medicine is a joint venture of Laurentian and Lakehead universities.