NSCC faculty and support staff vote to leave Nova Scotia Teachers Union

Faculty and professional support staff at Nova Scotia Community College (NSCC) have voted to leave the Nova Scotia Teachers Union (NSTU) and form their own union.

The new union, called the Nova Scotia Community College Academic Union, announced the results of the vote on Thursday.

“I am pleased with the outcome of the vote,” said Barbara Gillis, the president of the NSCC Academic Union.

“The numbers give us a strong mandate to move forward and build a post-secondary focused union to support faculty and professional support employees.”

Tweet This Click to share quote on Twitter: "The numbers give us a strong mandate to move forward and build a post-secondary focused union to support faculty and professional support employees."

READ MORE: NSCC faculty exploring splitting from NSTU, forming own association

Just over 700 of the 939 NSCC personnel voted in favour of leaving the NSTU, which will make them the second largest post-secondary union in Nova Scotia.

NSCC faculty members  and support staff had accounted for roughly a tenth of the the NSTU membership, which had about 10,500 members before Thursday’s announcement.

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Voting was held on June 8, 11 and 12.

Liette Doucet, president of the NSTU, said that organization is disappointed that NSCC faculty have made the decision to form a new union but thanked them for their role in the teachers union.

“We wish them a smooth transition over the coming weeks and months, and hope we can continue to work with them on joint issues affecting both the public school and post secondary education systems,” she said in a statement.

READ MORE: Six-year deals for NSTU members at Nova Scotia Community College

Ferne MacLennan, a faculty member in the business school at the college’s Kingstec campus and local representative on the NSTU’s provincial executive, told Global News earlier this month that there wasn’t one particular problem that spurred the movement, but faculty members became particularly interested in the concept over the past six-to-eight months.

“We just finished a contract, maybe that’s the time,” MacLennan said.

Tweet This Click to share quote on Twitter: "We just finished a contract, maybe that's the time," MacLennan said.

“There’s some labour tension in the province between the government and its employees, and maybe that’s what brought people forward and started looking at it, and that’s just pure speculation on my part.”

NSCC faculty members had been represented by the NSTU since 1996.