St. Clair College will be suspending classes if there's a strike by its faculty.
President Patti France says she doesn't want students to cross the picket lines in Windsor or Chatham during a strike and wants to be respectful of a work stoppage.
If there's a strike, France hopes it doesn't last long.
"In the history of the strikes in my 30 years here, they have never been longer than three weeks and a student has never lost a semester because of a work stoppage. We have a full contingency plan and we're not anticipating that it will negatively impact any of our students," says France.
The Ontario Public Service Employees Union says faculty at Ontario’s public colleges will be in a legal strike position as of October 15 at 12:01am. The union says the main bargaining issues are education quality and the ongoing “exploitation of contract faculty.”
OPSEU represents more than 12,000 college professors, instructors, counsellors, and librarians. Their collective agreement expires on Saturday.
France says both Windsor and Chatham campuses have a contingency plan but hopes it doesn't come to that.
"We have a full contingency plan and negotiations are still going on. We're very hopeful that there's a mutual resolve and at the end of the day all is well and all the planning is not really necessary," France says. "St. Clair College enjoys really good staff relations with both their support staff and their faculty and we're not anticipating any problems. Worst case scenario, if there is a work stoppage, it'll be respectful on both sides."