The University of Ottawa’s teaching professors’ association announced on Friday that its members voted “overwhelmingly” in favour of a strike. According to a news release from the Association of Teaching Professors of the University of Ottawa (ATPUO), more than 860 of its members voted in favour of job action, which includes a strike, if necessary. The association says 88.2 per cent of the members from the Main Unit, 73.1 per cent from the Official Languages and Bilingualism Institute and 100 per cent of the Toronto-Windsor unit supported job action. “Our members are sending a clear message to the administration that they no longer accept the status quo and that current conditions have become intolerable,” Nelson Arturo Ovalle Diaz, the association’s chief negotiator, said in a statement. The association’s 2,500 members are mostly contractual teaching staff, and ATPUO says their collective agreement expired on Aug. 31, 2025. The association says they are seeking improvements to working conditions and expressed concerns the university considering creating an “unlimited number of intensive teaching positions” that would be incorporated into bargaining units for regular professors. “Hundreds of teaching contracts, including permanent teaching contracts, would be taken away from ATPUO members,” Luc Angers, a member of the bargaining committee, said in a statement. “This would increase precarity and threaten the quality of education.” The association says they believe an agreement can be reached without needing to resort to a labour dispute and the strike mandate does not mean “an immediate disruption of classes.” “Rather, it is a strategic tool designed to compel the employer to return to the bargaining table with a genuine commitment to reaching a fair agreement,” the association said. In a statement to CTV News Ottawa, a spokesperson for the University of Ottawa said, “the university is committed to bargaining in good faith and arriving at a negotiated settlement with the union.”
