Corp Comm Connects

Ontario education unions launch court challenges of public sector wage cap

Ipolitics.ca
Dec. 13, 2019
Victoria Gibson

Four of Ontario’s education unions are launching court challenges of the Ford government’s public sector wage cap, which will each argue that the legislation violates educators’ constitutional rights to unrestricted collective bargaining.

The four groups -- who collectively represent Ontario’s public elementary, public secondary, French and English Catholic educators -- assembled their presidents to announce the move at Queen’s Park on Thursday morning, on the last day that the provincial legislature is scheduled to sit for 2019.

“This is not about money. It’s about the right to negotiate without government interference,” Remi Sabourin, president of the Association des enseignantes et des enseignants franco-ontariens, claimed to reporters. (The challenges are being filed separately due to different sets of facts, but the groups are hoping that their cases will be heard in court together.)

Treasury Board President Peter Bethlenfalvy argued in response that the legislation didn’t impact existing collective agreements, impede bargaining or the right to strike, impose wage freezes, wage rollbacks or job losses.

The wage cap for public sector workers -- also known as Bill 124 -- was passed at Queen’s Park early last month. The government presented the bill as offering “reasonable wage increases” to the public sector. Education unions, however, condemned the passage of the bill, saying it ignored workers’ rights and interfered with the ongoing bargaining process. They promised at the time to explore options such as a potential court fight.

The Canadian Union of Public Employees has also pledged to challenge Bill 124 in the courts. When the four union presidents were asked on Thursday why CUPE was not also at the table, Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario president Sam Hammond hinted that other “public sector unions” would likely be announcing other court fights. (Liz Stuart, president of the Ontario English Catholic Teachers’ Association, said the four groups had been waiting for the legislation to pass before launching their challenges.)

Education Minister Stephen Lecce was not immediately available to comment on the news, with Bethlenfalvy responding instead. When Lecce was asked about the possibility of a court challenge last month, and whether it could potentially thrust the province back to the bargaining table if the bill was overturned, he rejected the premise of reporters’ questions. “We have a strong sense of confidence in the constitutionality of the Bill,” Lecce replied.

The province is currently locked in negotiations with five different unions representing education workers and teachers, and have so far this fall reached one -- now-ratified -- agreement with CUPE-represented educators, and one tentative agreement with the Education Workers’ Alliance of Ontario. While Bill 124 has a mechanism that allows for exceptions to the cap, Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation President Harvey Bischof said they didn’t have any details of how that mechanism worked.

Bethlenfalvy declined on Thursday to say whether he would approve an exception to the cap, if Lecce requested one due to a bargaining stalemate.

Premier Doug Ford weighed in on the ongoing negotiations during Thursday’s question period, alleging that the unions were holding the province, the economy, parents and students “hostage.” “The heads of the unions want to make sure they line the pockets of the unions. They don’t worry about the teachers. They don’t worry about the parents,” Ford claimed, in response to a question from NDP leader Andrea Horwath.

Earlier this week, the province released data that costed out some of the requests on the table from OSSTF, claiming that the union’s asks could cost taxpayers more than $7 billion by 2021-22 -- if each proposal was also granted to every other education union. It’s unclear how many of the asks would, in fact, have to be extended out to all other unions due to me-too clauses, such as one in the CUPE deal on salary increases.

OSSTF is asking for a two per cent increase in salary and a six per cent increase in benefits, saying that doing so would keep pace with the rate of inflation. Lecce has called the ask from OSSTF an “unacceptable request.”

The newly-announced court challenge is not the first time in recent years that Ontario’s education unions have taken the province to court over allegations of interfering with collective bargaining. In 2016, an Ontario judge found that the provincial government had “substantially interfered with meaningful collective bargaining” in imposing contracts in 2012 -- through Bill 115 -- that froze some educators’ wages. On Thursday, Hammond said his union was still before the courts over a remedy.

As of 2017, per the Canadian Press, Ontario owed teachers and education workers more than $100 million to compensate for the rights violation.

“I’m not going to compare and contrast, and litigate that,” Bethlenfalvy said when asked by reporters why he believed Bill 124 would stand in court where Bill 115 did not. He also declined to rule out invoking the notwithstanding clause on Bill 124, in the event that an Ontario court found it unconstitutional -- saying he was unwilling to dive into hypotheticals.

He pointed to the government’s consultations before bringing forward the bill, saying they’d met with 57 bargaining agents -- but when asked by a reporter how many of those agents had supported a wage cap, replied that he “didn’t do a poll.” Asked further if any had supported such a move, he said he didn’t know. “Look, we’re protecting jobs here,” Bethlenfalvy said.

When asked later if it was either a one per cent cap or layoffs, Bethlenfalvy did not protest. “You’ve only got so many levers to pull in government.”