One-day strike by high school teachers set to hit some schools -- including those in Toronto

Thestar.com
Dec. 11, 2019
Kristin Rushowy

A second, one-day strike by public high school teachers will hit a number of boards across Ontario on Wednesday -- including Toronto.

Given no talks have taken place in more than a week, and none were scheduled, Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation President Harvey Bischof said it was impossible to avert the walkout.

“I would like (the government) to come to the table and make proposals that safeguard the quality of education,” said Bischof. “It would be really nice if we could get back to the table and start talking about issues that are good for the quality of education.”

All 60,000 members -- including teachers, education workers and professional staff -- took part in a daylong walkout last Wednesday that closed all public high schools and some elementary schools in French and Catholic boards. It was their first province-wide action in more than two decades.

Since then, no negotiations have taken place, so the union has upped the pressure on the Ford government, this week targeting boards in each corner of the province, and will see about one-quarter of all members hit the picket lines.

On Tuesday, Education Minister Stephen Lecce again urged the union to accept his offer of a private mediator, as opposed to the Ministry of Labour mediator who has been at the table, and cancel the strike.

“The objective of this government is to keep kids in class. We are negotiating in good faith to achieve that objective, as we did with CUPE one month ago,” Lecce said, referring to the three-year deal reached in October with support staff.

Lecce also announced Tuesday that his government had secured a deal with a small education worker union of about 5,000 full-time workers, the Education Workers Alliance of Ontario.

In order for OSSTF to return to bargaining, Bischof has said the government has to be willing to move on its plan to mandate two e-learning courses, boost classes from an average of 22 to 25, down from the original proposal of four online courses and class sizes of an average of 28, as well as consider a salary boost equal to the cost of living.

The government wants to cap public sector wage increases to one per cent a year, which Lecce said would cost the province $750 million over four years for all education workers.

In the legislature, he said Ontario teachers are “amongst the highest paid in the industrialized world.”

Lecce also said “we’re being reasonable with the taxpayer of this province. We’re offering a $750-million increase. We think that’s fair. We also believe that students should not be in the middle of this discussion.

Former Liberal education minister Mitzie Hunter said the “government has to calm down (the adversarial tone) and figure out how they are going to get a deal at the table. Students not being in classrooms is not really good for anyone -- it’s not good for students, for parents and I’m sure that teachers want to be in the classroom to teach. This is extremely disruptive to our education system.”