Ontario’s 55,000 education workers could walk off the job again next week.
The Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), which represents early childhood educators, education assistants, custodians, and secretaries has filed a five day strike notice after talks with the province broke down.
While middle ground was reached with the province on wages, the union alleges the government "refused to invest in the services that students need and parents expect, precipitating this escalation."
"From the beginning, we’ve been focused on improved jobs for education workers and improved services for students. For us, there is no one without the other,” Laura Walton, CUPE's Ontario School Board Council of Unions president, said in a statement Wednesday morning. “It’s incredibly disappointing that the Ford government categorically refused to put money on the table to give students the type of learning environment they need.”
The union said it wants guarantees that an early childhood educator will be placed in every kindergarten classroom, as well as more educational assistants, librarians, custodians, and maintenance workers hired to better support students and tackle a $16 billion repair backlog.
"If this government was serious about their plan to catch up, they’d listen to the workers who do the most to support learners and they’d put an early childhood educator in every kindergarten class and provide more students with the direct support of an educational assistant,” said Walton. “We’ve heard from parents desperate for these improvements. We felt their support at our protests across the province. And we’re not going to turn our backs on students, parents, and families.”
Education workers previously took job action at the start of the month after the two sides reached an impasse that led a mediator to end negotiations. In a bid to stop the walkout, the Ontario government passed legislation using the notwithstanding clause to impose a contract on workers and make their strike illegal. Despite that, workers were off the job for two days before Premier Doug Ford pledged to rescind Bill 28 on November 7 and return to the bargaining table if employees went back to the classroom.
Education workers went back to work on November 8 and the bill was formally repealed in its entirety on Monday.
Speaking to reporters at Queen's Park, Education Minister Stephen Lecce said the government had offered the union wage increases, with no demanded concessions.
"CUPE has rejected all of these improved offers," said Lecce. "We said we would repeal the bill and we did that. We said that we would increase wages across the board significantly for lower paid workers, and we did that.... We're at the table today ready to land a deal that invests more in lower income workers and keeps kids in class so that we can avoid this unnecessary strike that will impose so much hardship on so many children."
Until now, both sides had been tight lipped about negotiations. Although Ford had publicly announced last week that the province returned to the bargaining table with an "improved offer." He did not get into specifics, other than to state that it would particularly benefit lower-income workers.
Prior to that the last offer made by the province included an annual wage increase of 2.5 per cent for those making less than $43,000 and 1.5 per cent for all other workers.
Wednesday's notice by education workers means they could strike as early as Monday unless a deal is reached.
“This is not where we wanted to be,” said Walton. “We hoped the Ford government would accept our reasonable, affordable, and necessary proposals five months ago. We hoped they’d recognize the urgency of workers’ plea for resources in our historic strike vote. We hoped they’d respond to last week’s show of parent and worker solidarity. Yet they came back without a single cent for students. They’ve left us no choice.”
OSBCU 2022 Bargaining Update # 44| Négociation du CSCSO 2022 - Mise à jour no 44 - 5 Day Notice, Again #OnPoli #OntEd https://t.co/JWikE52YKV pic.twitter.com/VYmLOTda8R
— OSBCU-CSCSO (@osbcucscso) November 16, 2022
