Teachers call on PCs to bargain
Rotating strike set for nearly 20 school boards over stalled negotiations
Public high school students in Durham, Hamilton and Ottawa will not have classes Wednesday as the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation holds another in a series of rotating strikes at almost 20 school boards to protest stalled contract talks with the province.
“It’s time for the Ford government to come to the table with meaningful responses to our proposals so that we can work toward a deal that protects the quality of education in Ontario,” OSSTF president Harvey Bischof said in a statement Friday.
Education Minister Stephen Lecce said the union’s fifth such walkout will be “unfair to students and their families.” The OSSTF move came a day after Premier Doug Ford said he wants to “get a deal done” with education unions — two of which subsequently decided to escalate job action to press contract demands.
Starting Monday, members of the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario (ETFO) will stop supervising after-school extracurricular activities such as sports and theatre and will no longer go on field trips. Members won’t arrive at schools more than 30 minutes before the start of the school day and will leave no later than 15 minutes of the final bell.
Meanwhile, the Ontario English Catholic Teachers’ Association announced members in all Catholic schools from kindergarten to Grade 12 will not complete report cards or help with the preparation for EQAO standardized tests. The 83,000-member ETFO of Ontario has threatened to begin rotating strikes starting Jan. 20 unless a contract is reached, potentially forcing hundreds of thousands of parents to make child-care arrangements.
On Friday, the Toronto District School Board issued a memo to parents of elementary school pupils to clear up any questions about field trips scheduled for next week.
“At this time, all field trips scheduled to take place during the job action will be cancelled. Additional details about specific field trips, including refunds, as well as answers about extracurricular activities will be communicated by your school in the very near future,” the memo said.
Teachers’ unions say government plans to increase class sizes and force students to take online courses will compromise the quality of education, and argue a Ford government law restricting public sector wage increases to one per cent is unconstitutional because it restricts collective bargaining.
Lecce accused teacher union leaders of being more interested in their members than in the students in their classrooms.
“These union leaders will forcefully advocate for the interests of their members — from higher wages to enhanced entitlements — however they ought not oppose the academic aspirations of our students,” Lecce said in a statement. “Students should be in class.” The Durham District School Board, Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board, Hamilton-Wentworth Catholic District School Board, OttawaCarleton District School Board and Upper Grand District School Board are among boards affected by Wednesday’s job action, the OSSTF said.