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Algonquin College will have to pay up to $29 million a year to comply with the province’s new Fair Workplaces, Better Jobs law, according to college documents.

That’s an estimate of the cost of meeting the equal-pay-for-equal-work provisions in Bill 148, the law that is better known for boosting the minimum wage.

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Ontario’s 24 colleges are all in a similar predicament since they rely on an army of contract instructors who are paid substantially less than full-time professors. Precarious work by contract instructors was a key issue in the five-week faculty strike at Ontario colleges this fall.

The same issue is back at the forefront with the passage of Bill 148, which says employers in Ontario must pay workers who do the same job the same wage.

It’s difficult to know what the total cost to colleges will be across the province. But Algonquin’s “preliminary estimates” give an indication of how significant the sums could be.