English Catholic teachers reach tentative deal
Details of agreement will remain confidential until it is ratified, union says
TORONTO—Ontario’s English Catholic teachers announced Thursday that they reached a tentative contract with the province, the first of the four major unions to get a deal in a highly contentious round of bargaining.
The Ontario English Catholic Teachers’ Association (OECTA) said details of the deal will remain confidential until it is ratified. Its members are set to vote April 7 and 8.
Education Minister Stephen Lecce said moving forward, he is focused on getting agreements with the other teachers unions. “We believe that it hopefully will build momentum for future deals,” he said.
All of the four major unions have been engaging in various rotating and provincewide strikes over the past several months of bargaining and have been trading public jabs and rhetoric with the government.
But negotiations resumed this week with all unions except the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation after Lecce made recent concessions on two key issues.
The government offered to increase average high school class sizes from 22 last year to 23 next year instead of the government’s original target of 28, and allow an opt-out for e-learning courses it previously said would be mandatory.
But the government had said it was not budging beyond an offer to increase wages and benefits by one per cent per year — the unions have asked for two per cent on salary and around six per cent on benefits — and that it wanted concessions on a regulation that dictates seniority-based hiring.
OECTA previously said it would accept the one per cent wage increase if the province backed down on class sizes and mandatory e-learning, though it would continue with a court challenge to government wage restraint legislation.
All of the teachers unions and many other unions and labour groups are challenging the legislation as unconstitutional, arguing it violates collective bargaining rights.
Meanwhile, the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario (ETFO) was negotiating Thursday with the government for the second day in a row, after talks went late into the evening Wednesday. ETFO also said it would suspend rotating strike action, set to begin on March 23, in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.