Elementary school teachers in Toronto, Ottawa, York Region holding one-day strike

Jan. 15, 2020
Toronto.com
Kristin Rushowy

Elementary teachers and early childhood educators in Toronto, York Region and Ottawa will be the first to walk off the job in a day-long strike planned for Monday.

An internal memo sent early Wednesday morning to the 83,000 members of the Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario said “unless the government makes an immediate effort to engage in serious talks, ETFO will have no option but to further escalate our strike action.”

The memo, obtained by the Star, also notes that “as of today, no additional dates for contract talks have been established.”

The ETFO strike will comes a day before Tuesday’s province-wide walkout by the 45,000-member Ontario English Catholic Teachers’ Association, which represents both elementary and secondary teachers.

Ontario’s public secondary teachers hit the picket lines Wednesday, closing hundreds of schools across the province
The day-long strikes will send parents scrambling to arrange childcare.

On Wednesday, Education Minister Stephen Lecce announced the government plans to reimburse parents up to $60 per day for childcare costs in the event of strikes in elementary schools or childcare centres located in schools.

“We recognize the impact of union escalation on families is real, and unions expect hard-working families to bear the costs of their cyclical labour action,” he said.

“While unions impose hardship on families and students, our government is taking proactive steps to ensure students remain cared for.”

The government has set up a sliding scale of daycare reimbursement levels, and is also opening a “support for parents helpline.”

High school teachers in about 20 boards are engaging in their fifth Wednesday walkout, which began in December as a way to up the pressure on the provincial government given talks have gone nowhere.

The only teacher union currently bargaining with the province and school board associations is the AEFO, representing teachers in Ontario’s 12 French-language boards.

For the first time in 20-plus years, all of the teacher unions are engaging in job action, ranging from largely administrative work-to-rule campaigns -- what the AEFO will begin Thursday -- to the day-long strikes.

The teacher unions also represent support workers and professional staff in some boards, meaning all boards -- public, French, Catholic, French Catholic -- can be hit by any one union’s job action.

The ETFO memo notes that the union is providing the required five-day notice “of an escalation ... in strike action to a full withdrawal strike in one or more school boards.”

It says the following boards will be impacted Monday: Ottawa-Carleton District School Board, Toronto District School Board, Toronto Catholic District School Board and York Region District School Board.

The Toronto Catholic board will be affected two days in a row by strike action, given the province-wide strike Tuesday by the Ontario English Catholic Teachers’ Association. Monday’s strike impacts its early childhood educators.

The memo also says that “following this full withdrawal, on January 21, the ETFO members employed by the above boards will return to their regular duties but will continue to participate “ in the job action that includes no field trips and extracurricular activities outside the school day.

The union also is also planning upcoming day-long strikes in other boards, and “members will be provided with regular updates on strike notices and locations.”

The union has also prepared talking points and a handout for parents for teachers to use in explaining the job action.

“Now is an important time for all 83,000 members to stand together and be united. We cannot, and will not, allow the public education system that our members have built, and our students deserve, to be decimated by the Ford government. We must be prepared to take action to defend public education,” says the memo.

Teachers unions have said class size increases and cuts are their main concerns in bargaining. They are also seeking a commitment from provincial negotiators to keep the full-day kindergarten staffing model as is, with one full-time teacher and one full-time early childhood educator.

The province says teachers are most concerned with compensation, seeking cost-of living increases of about two per cent a year. The Ford government recently passed legislation limiting public sector pay increases to one per cent a year.

In 1997, amid a protest by all teacher unions that shut down schools across the province for two weeks, the Conservative government of the day provided parents with a $40 per day reimbursement for any daycare costs they incurrred, up to a $400 maximum.