The province announced Friday it has ratified a collective agreement with the College of New Caledonia Faculty Association.
The new deal with the Post Secondary Employers' Association covers a two-year period, but it won't be long before the parties are back at the bargaining table.
The retroactive contract, which includes faculty staff at Okanagan College and Camosun College, expires in just three weeks.
CNC faculty had been working without a contract since a three-year deal ran out March 31, 2010.
"I'm pleased to hear that these agreements are in place for both the faculty and the students they instruct," said Advanced Education Minister Naomi Yamamoto, in a prepared statement.
CNC faculty joined the growing list of public-sector unions that have settled new contracts under the government's net-zero mandate, with only a few agreements still to be worked out. "We're not pleased we're ending up with what is essentially status quo, but we're happy to have an agreement in place, said CNC Faculty Association president David Rourke, when the agreement was first announced Jan. 26.
"We thought it would be best to sign off on the agreement and look to aligning ourselves with the other workers in health care and education that will be looking at the 2012-2014 round. In this round, negotiations were protracted and often challenging due to the government's net-zero mandate for post-secondary education workers."
In the new round of bargaining for the two-year period ending March 31, 2014, public sector employees have the potential to hammer out wage increases under the province's co-operative gains mandate, as long as services are maintained without increasing any college budgets.
Earlier this month, the CNC board of governors approved a two per cent tuition increase that generate $100,000 in additional funding to attack the college's $2.3 million budget deficit. The college board is putting a plan in place that should result in an additional $2 million in budget savings for the 2012-13 fiscal year.
