Crisis or scandal? The deliberate dismantling of Ontario's public college system

In our third episode we welcome support staff president for the Ontario Public Service Employees Union Local 418 at St.Lawrence College. Amanda Shaw, second vice president of OPSEU Local 415 at Algonquin College, Martin Lee and from George Brown College, member of OPSEU's part-time and sessional divisional executive, Ben McCarthy.

We discuss the mass layoffs and program and campus closures across Ontario's 24 publicly funded colleges, impacts on college workers, students, and wider communities, what this means for the future of public post-secondary education and how what has been publicized as a "crisis" is really a scandal of the deliberate dismantling of the public college system by the Government of Ontario.

According to Lee:

“We've been using the word 'crisis' a lot, right? And, you know, it's got all the symptoms of being a crisis ... But it's not a crisis, it's a scandal. What we're actually looking at is a scandal. A crisis is something that happens. A rainfall, you know, it's an act of God. No, no, this is deliberate and intentional. And the more you see it, the more it becomes clear that this is an active process by the Doug Ford government.”

Reflecting on the situation facing college workers and communities, Shaw says:

“We're seeing a hemorrhaging of our members from the system. It's about job security. It's about protecting the jobs in the communities ... it's about keeping a viable educational option in the communities and making sure that we're able to meet industry need ... If we don't have colleges that exist in those smaller communities, then what's to be said of education?”

On the changing nature of union organizing, McCarthy says:

“Part of this neoliberal trend that emphasizes the bottom line also emphasizes an individualism that does not serve worker rights, that does not serve worker power…If disaster capitalism continues to profit off of these moments of unrest, of uncertainty to their profit..that's also a possibility for us, that is organized labour..To step into that uncertainty, and by collectivizing our fight, raising the water in the harbour for everybody.”

Read OPSEU’s report, Dismantling Public Futures: Diverting Training Money from Ontario Colleges Through Ford's Skills Development Fund Endangers the Provincial Economy

And Ben McCarthy’s article in The Grind, The Manufactured Crisis in Ontario Colleges

About today’s guests: 

With 25 years of experience in the college system, Amanda Shaw currently works for St. Lawrence College on the Cornwall campus as an academic planning assistant. She is currently serving as support staff local president for OPSEU/SEFPO Local 418, and is on her third term.

Ben McCarthy is a labour organizer, artist, and teacher working in Toronto, Canada. He is a member of the divisional executive representing precarious faculty with OPSEU. He teaches courses in labour history, immigration, and cultural production at George Brown college. His artwork interrogates the technological and economic conditions that produce the listening subject. 

Dr Martin Lee is the second vice-president of OPSEU Local 415 at Algonquin College. In his teaching role, Martin is a professor of biochemistry, a former academic coordinator, and active researcher in the field of applied physical biochemistry. In OPSEU at a provincial level, he was on the Workload Monitoring Group (WMG), resulting in the world’s largest cohesive study of faculty workload. This then led to his involvement in the Ontario College Academic Bargaining team for 2024 (and ongoing). His union work focuses on building the data which drives the local and the division and tries to bring an equity lens to the voice of the membership, often supporting these arguments with the data needed to formulate novel approaches. He has presented the topic of what he calls ‘data-weaving’: the process of taking any and all sets of information that a local has at hand, and using it to better understand large union sets, including those with multiple sites, multiple job classifications, or subgroups.

Transcript of this episode can be accessed at georgebrown.ca/TommyDouglasInstitute or here. 

Image: Amanda Shaw, Ben McCarthy, Martin Lee / Used with permission.

Music: Ang Kahora. Lynne, Bjorn. Rights Purchased. 

Intro Voices: Ashley Booth (Podcast Announcer); Bob Luker (Tommy) 

Courage My Friends podcast organizing committee: Chandra Budhu, Ashley Booth, Resh Budhu. 

Produced by: Resh Budhu, Tommy Douglas Institute of Labour and Social Justice and Breanne Doyle, rabble.ca. 

Host: Resh Budhu.