Ontario parents, you may want to add “prepare for a teacher strike” to your back-to-school to-do list.
Teachers have been without a new contract since September 2022 and since they have a history of engaging in strike action, this round should be no different.
Negotiations have been relatively quiet for two reasons. Firstly, students and parents faced a lot of disruption due to COVID school closures and restrictions. Secondly, CUPE, the largest education workers’ union in Ontario, engaged in strike action in the fall of 2022 which continued these disruptions.
Teachers will not sit on the sideline for much longer. From 2019 to 2022, they took a 1% salary increase each year for three years. With inflation running high, teachers’ unions will claim they need more money to offset cost-of-living increases.
What the government is currently offering is insufficient for the teachers’ unions. Every party at the negotiation table knows what the government’s bottom-line offer likely is — the deal they signed with CUPE. The government agreed to give CUPE workers an average annual increase of 3.59% each year for four years. The government is not going to offer the teachers more than what they gave CUPE. If they want to offer less, they’re going to lose that battle.
If the teachers liked the CUPE deal, they would have signed it already, instead of keeping their members waiting for a salary increase amid high inflation. So, what gives? To make the government move, they’ll create instability in the system.
In September or early October, they will likely begin getting their strike mandate from their members, which ETFO and OSSTF are already planning. Come late October and November, there will be work-to-rule action which will impact report cards, parent teacher interviews and extracurricular activities. Come February or March 2024, they will start engaging in rotating strikes and one-off province-wide strikes. Rotating strikes allow them to pressure the government while limiting the risk of back-to-work legislation.
The government can avoid this disruption by either offering more compensation, which is unlikely, or push its message to the public on why its offer is fair. Since Ontario teachers make good money and a 3.59% increase would add thousands of dollars to their salaries, the government’s only chance at maintaining its bottom line is to start getting the public on its side. The public needs to know what the average compensation of a teacher is, how much extra money they will be receiving and the total amount these proposals will increase the government’s budget by — and accordingly, the bill to taxpayers.
If teachers indicate they will engage in strike action, the government should implement back-to-work legislation with mandatory interest arbitration. This would avoid any major labour disruption and ensure Charter compliance — since this mechanism has been approved by the Supreme Court of Canada as a reasonable substitute for free collective bargaining. The government would likely see the arbitrator impose the same terms on teachers’ unions that CUPE voluntarily agreed to due to the concept of replication. Arbitrators determine replication by looking at agreements reached by the same or a similar employer with similar classifications of workers.
The government should be able to argue CUPE is similar enough to warrant replicating its voluntary agreement. The risk is that an arbitrator will not be able to replicate the issue of class size and teacher-hiring practices from the CUPE deal, since those are unique to teachers.
If you are a parent relaxing on the beach and planning on getting your children ready for the new school year, you should also be preparing for a situation where their learning will be disrupted. Canadians have had to deal with strikes from the federal public sector and British Columbia port strikes and now they will see labour disruption from the Ontario public education sector.
Source: Toronto Sun
