Province’s high school teachers plan one-day strike

Ontario’s public high school teachers will stage a one-day strike next Wednesday in a bid to pressure the province as contract negotiations drag on.

The “full withdrawal of services” on Dec. 4 — the union’s first in more than two decades — was announced Thursday by Harvey Bischof, president of the 60,000-member Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation, amid growing tensions with the provincial government.

“This is intended to draw further attention to this government’s destructive cuts to the education system,” said Bischof, whose union also represents support staff, speech-language pathologists and social workers in some boards, who will also walk off the job for the day.

Bischof said there has been little progress at the bargaining table despite eight months of talks and a work-torule campaign that began Tuesday.

Education Minister Stephen Lecce called the union’s action “deeply troubling” and said the move would only harm students. He also accused the union of being unreasonable and not budging at the bargaining table.

“Strikes hurt kids,” said Lecce, renewing his call for the help of an independent mediator. Teachers should not “turn their backs on our children, and escalate to the point of compromising their education,” especially after just two days on a work-to rule campaign, he said.

“Our government has demonstrated consistently it is reasonable and student-centric by making major moves that have not been matched or reciprocated by the teachers’ unions,” Lecce said.

If a deal is not reached, the job action on Wednesday would mark the first allout strike for the union since 1997.

Bischof called it a “largely political” tactic to help his members get a deal. Unions are required to give five days’ notice of any job action or escalation.

He said there has not been “sufficient movement” in talks with the Ford government and school board associations to hammer out new contracts, and that provincial negotiators came to the table on Wednesday with nothing new.

Class sizes, e-learning and salary are among the outstanding issues.

In recent weeks, Lecce has said the province wants to increase average high school class sizes to 25 students from last year’s 22. That number is down from its original proposal of 28 students, but would still phase out thousands of teaching jobs and course options for teens.

Even in moving from last year’s average of 22 students to this year’s 22.5, boards have reported larger classes to offset smaller ones, as well as cancelled classes and limited course sections for students.

The Ontario Public School Boards’ Association, which is also at the bargaining table with the province and OSSTF, this week reiterated its serious concerns about bigger classes and mandatory elearning.

Lecce has proposed requiring students entering Grade 9 next fall to complete two e-learning courses to earn a high school diploma, down from the government’s original proposal of four online credits. Students already enrolled in high school would be exempt.

Both initiatives are unpopular with the public, polling has shown, and the Ontario Student Trustees’ Association — which represents all two million students in the province — is urging the government to drop the e-learning requirement altogether.

The high school teachers union is seeking salary increases equal to the cost of living — about two per cent this year — while the province has just passed legislation limiting any broader public-sector pay boosts to one per cent a year.

Bischof has said there is widespread public support for cost of living increases, which is what he said past raises have worked out to.

The Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario is also currently staging a largely administrative work-to-rule campaign, and has not announced any plans for a strike.

The province’s Catholic and Frenchlanguage teacher unions are not in legal strike positions.

The last provincewide strike by teachers was under the Progressive Conservative government of Mike Harris.

Four years ago, public secondary school teachers in Peel, Durham and northern Ontario’s Rainbow District went on a month-long strike before it was declared unlawful.

For this latest labour unrest, NDP education critic Marit Stiles said the premier must take the blame.

“Instead of picking a fight with educators and forcing them to fight to protect public education in Ontario, Doug Ford should listen to parents who say that schools need more caring adults in classrooms, not less,” she said.

Ford told reporters at Queen’s Park on Thursday that to “keep the kids in the classroom, that’s our main goal.”

He said his government is “doing everything we can to strike a deal. I think we’ve shown good faith.”

However, the premier wouldn’t tip his hand on any plans for back-to-work legislation in the event a longer strike takes place.

Bischof said he hopes “further action is not necessary.”

Meanwhile, the Ontario English Catholic Teachers’ Association is set to resume negotiations with the province on Friday, with president Liz Stuart saying “the government continues to insist on drastic cuts to publicly funded education.” Stuart would not speculate on any future job action by her association.

All 31 English public boards will be affected by the teacher strike. Support staff will be off the job in eight English Catholic boards and eight French boards.

The Toronto District School Board sent an email to parents Thursday night, advising that, in the event of a walkout, the board “would have no option, but to close all secondary schools to students as there would not be sufficient supervision to ensure safety.”