Teachers’ unions set to continue job action
All four major teachers’ unions in Ontario are currently taking job action. Here is a list of their planned strikes and work-torule campaigns.
Public Elementary Schools The union representing Ontario’s public elementary school teachers has scheduled rotating strikes for every day of the coming week, including a province-wide strike on Tuesday where all 83,000 members of will walk off their jobs.
The Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario said the rolling strikes mean that each school board in the province will strike twice next week — once on Tuesday’s province-wide walkout, and again on a designated day of the week.
Public High Schools Ontario’s high school teachers at nine boards will go on a oneday strike on Thursday. Affected districts include Peel, SuperiorGreenstone, Greater Essex Country, Avon Maitland, Niagara, Limestone, Renfrew and Huron-Superior Catholic.
The Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation says members will also continue their work-to-rule campaign, which started in November. That means teachers will not participate in staff meetings outside school hours or provide comments in report cards.
Catholic Schools The union representing Ontario’s English Catholic teachers has announced it will ramp up its administrative job action on Tuesday. The new action means that teachers will only undertake scheduled teaching and supervision duties and won’t accept additional work. Teachers will still participate in extracurricular activities and go through with parent-teacher interviews if they’ve been scheduled.
Catholic teachers have already stopped preparing report cards, participating in standardized testing or attending Ministry of Education initiatives as part of an effort launched in January. The Ontario English Catholic Teachers’ Association says it’s trying to minimize the effect of the job action on students.
Ontario French Schools Twelve-thousand members of the Association des enseignantes et des enseignants franco-ontariens (AEFO) will begin walking off the job once a week, with the first strike planned for Thursday. AEFO says it will also continue its work-to-rule program, in which members of the union no longer complete some administrative duties. The union recently met at the bargaining table, but negotiations fell apart.