Sudbury teachers set to join strike
High school classes will be disrupted at a second board, with more walkouts expected
Sudbury-area high school teachers will hit the picket lines Monday as a strike in Durham Region heads into its second week.
Rainbow District School Board Chair Doreen Dewar said the Sudbury-area board “came to the table ready to negotiate and responded to all union proposals. The union chose not to respond and advised (that) they did not see any possibility of progress,” said. “In fact, the union suggested the time would be better spent preparing for the strike.”
Sudbury’s union local — District 3 of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation — put out a news release Saturday blaming the strike and the talks’ failure on management’s “refusal to engage in real negotiations.”
James Clyke, president of District 3, had said Friday that while he did not wish to discuss specifics, he said the main issue at the table is the working conditions of teachers, “which have been under pressure for quite some time now, with ministry and school board initiatives that are constantly being piled on.
“When you start eroding those working conditions, the learning conditions for students are also affected.”
This round of contract talks is twotiered, with the provincial school boards’ associations, unions and the Ministry of Education trying to settle costly issues such as class size, salary and sick leave. Individual school boards and union locals are negotiating non-monetary items.
Dewar, whose board covers Sudbury, Espanola and Manitoulin, said she’s hopeful a local deal can be reached but called it “a difficult process” for all involved.
Locally, issues that could be dealt with include grievance procedures or unpaid leaves, and “we cannot (discuss) anything that has to do with monetary issues — that has to be done provincially,” she said.
“I’m getting the feeling that we won’t be able to sign off on anything until the provincial bargaining is done.”
A strike by District 3 teachers will affect some 5,000 students at the board’s 10 high schools.
The OSSTF has named five other boards it will target for local strikes — Peel, Halton, Waterloo, Ottawa and Lakehead/Thunder Bay — with Peel teachers heading off the job May 4 if no deal is reached.
On Friday, District 19 president Mike Bettiol said talks held last Thursday with the help of Ministry of Labour mediators “were extensive but very little was resolved.”
The two sides return to the bargaining table April 30 and May 1.
The OSSTF has said once on strike, teachers will remain off the job until a collective agreement is reached.
Michael Barrett, president of the Ontario Public School Boards’ Association, said the messaging around a possible Sudbury strike sounds the same as it did before Durham teachers hit the picket lines, “and to me is part of a larger strategy to apply pressure at the provincial table in order to come towards a deal.”
Barrett, who is also chair of the Durham District School Board, said he’s hearing from students and parents about the strike.
“There (were) no talks scheduled this weekend, no talks scheduled for Monday. The strike is entering its second week and, tragically, we are no further ahead than we were last Monday.