A fine woodworking class at Algonquin College in Ottawa includes some of the 200,000 students across the province who could be affected by a strike. (CBC)

Ontario's 200,000 college students may soon face picket lines after union negotiators for the province's community college faculty turned down the latest offer from their employer.

The bargaining team for the 24 colleges was "disappointed" to report the news, said a bulletin posted online and dated Jan. 27.

The team from the College Compensation and Appointments Council is asking the union to hold a faculty vote on the what it called its "final" offer.

The Ontario Public Service Employees Union represents 9,000 college instructors, counsellors and librarians, who voted 57 per cent in favour of a strike earlier in January.

The colleges said the offer was issued Wednesday after several days of bargaining and includes:

• Reduction of the contract length from four years to three.
• A 5.9 per cent salary increase over three years.
• A new maximum salary cap of $102,186, up $5,650 from the previous contract.
• Withdrawal of contentious proposals about retiree life insurance options, probation and sick leave.

However, Rod Bain, a member of the union bargaining team, said the offer failed to address many of the workload issues important to faculty or issues of academic freedom.

Bain said the union will decide its next steps Saturday, including whether to take the offer to a vote. However, bargaining will continue in the meantime. He added that the colleges have the option to put their offer to a union vote themselves if they choose to do so.

"Their latest move is really just a ploy, an attempt to bargain outside of actual bargaining — doing it through the media, essentially," he said, adding that the colleges have been calling every offer their "final" offer.

Hope for a vote

On Thursday, Bill Tennant, a professor of business at St. Lawrence College in Kingston, said he hopes the union will let its members vote on the deal.

"I'd accept it in a heartbeat," he added.

He believes it's a good deal given the province's huge deficit and the fact that many of its colleges are struggling financially.

The union held a strike vote Jan. 13, a month after talks broke down between the two sides, following five months of bargaining.

For the union, key issues are workload, academic freedom and management's decision in November to impose its offer on the teachers without a vote.

The union wants a 2.5 per cent pay increase in each year of a three-year contract.