Public elementary teachers fully favour potential strike

Public elementary teachers could be hitting the picket lines before the end of the month if a deal on a new contract can’t be reached.

Central strike votes were held in October by Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario (ETFO) locals across the province, including the Kawarthas, with 98 per cent of 83,000 union members voting in favour of strike action.

Ontario teachers have been without a new contract since the end of August and negotiations have been at a stalemate over a number of issues, including class size, class structure, violence in classrooms and the preservation of the current fullday kindergarten model.

The two sides in the public elementary teachers dispute will be meeting with a conciliator starting Monday.

If negotiations continue to falter, the union could file a no board report, which would put Ontario’s public elementary teachers in a strike position 17 working days later, according to Trillium Lakelands ETFO local president Karen Bratina noted.

Kawartha Pine Ridge ETFO local president Shirley Bell said the vote doesn’t guarantee job action, but does give the union another tool to use at the negotiating table.

While teachers could walk off the job, they could also perform work-to-rule and forgo tasks that they aren’t mandated to perform, she said.

“Whether that be paperwork, all the administrative stuff we do, all the way to full withdrawal,” Bell said.

In October, CUPE educational workers took part in work-torule for a week, and nearly went on strike, but at the last minute the province negotiated a deal which to avoid it.

Meanwhile Ontario’s public high school teachers have also been without a new contract since the end of August.

High school teachers with the Kawartha Pine Ridge District School Board have a strike vote planned for Monday night in Baltimore, south of Peterborough.

Voting will continue Thursday at branches of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation District 14.

Strike votes are being held by OSSTF locals across Ontario through to Nov. 15.

Elementary and high school teachers in the English Catholic system are also holding strike votes, with results.

Bell said elementary teachers are being told to “go ahead with things as usual. Plan your trips, keep planning your extracurriculars. … Plan until we know we’re not doing them.”

Meg Cavanagh, president of the student council at Thomas A. Stewart Secondary School in Peterborough, said she is prepared to put her plans to attend Queen’s University next year on hold if a strike disrupts her from completing her credits.

“If it comes down to it, I believe many students are prepared to lose a year or a semester’s worth of courses,” Cavanagh said. “We understand that if the changes the government is proposing do go through, they’re going to have a lasting impact on education.”

OSSTF District 14 president Erin Leonard said the effects of the province’s changes have led to a reduction of 55 teachers across the Kawartha Pine Ridge

District School Board, making it more difficult to support voluntary extracurricular programs and to support students with difficult needs.

Students have seen courses combined, offered on multigrade levels, and some have been cancelled at the Grade 12 level, making it more difficult for potential graduates to acquire credits they need for postsecondary admission, she said.

Teachers also fear that the province’s plan to have senior students take some required courses through e-learning may to not be suitable for the needs of every student, she said.

The province introduced Bill 124 just before the legislature broke for the summer — around when talks with the education unions were beginning. The Tories are now moving the legislation forward, potentially passing it as early as next week.

The bill would cap wage increases to an average of one per cent a year for three years for the broader public sector. That is the increase agreed to by CUPE for its 55,000 education workers in a deal that narrowly averted a strike last month.