Part-time and sessional faculty at Ontario’s community colleges won’t know the result of their union certification vote for weeks, thanks to an objection from the colleges over voter eligibility.

A question from college manage­ment over who was eligible to take part in the recent three-week vote among part-time teachers is keeping the ballot boxes sealed until the Ontario Labour Relations Board hears the dispute March 31.

Roger Couvrette, president of the part-time college workers’ asso­ciation, said more than 3,500 people at the province’s 24 commu­nity colleges voted Jan. 19–Feb. 5 to determine whether they would join the Ontario Public Service Employees Union.

“The colleges have been fighting against our organizing drive from the very start and this current example of stonewalling is only the most recent of many,” he said. “They don’t want the votes to be counted, and if it wasn’t for the legal objections of college lawyers, the OLRB would be counting the votes right now.”

Until last October, it was against the law for part-time and sessional college workers in Ontario to even join a union.

“The part-time and sessional col­lege faculty have had to wait for years for the right to unionize,” Cou­vrette said. “We are calling on college ma­nagement to drop their ob­jec­tions to opening the ballot boxes and let democracy prevail.”