Ford government introducing legislation to prevent CUPE strike

The Ford government is planning to introduce legislation on Monday, Oct. 31 which will prevent education workers from going on strike.

The Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), who represent about 55,000 Ontario education workers, gave five days’ notice of a potential province wide strike on Sunday, Oct. 30 if a new deal isn’t reached with the government by Friday, Nov. 4

The union has not indicated if staff would engage in a full or partial strike, start with a work-to-rule campaign, or take some other course of action at that point.

Following an unscheduled meeting on Sunday (Oct. 30), Education Minister Stephen Lecce said the union’s refusal to withdraw their intent to strike leaves them with “no other choice” but to introduce legislation in order to ensure students “remain in class to catch up on their learning.”

Laura Walton, president of CUPE’s Ontario School Boards Council of Unions, says they went into meeting “optimistic” but that the government had no intention of “negotiating fairly” with education workers.

“They brought us into a meeting and they told us that they have a ‘final offer’ for us and if we continue to proceed down the road they will force us back to work and they will impose a collective agreement on education workers,” Walton told reporters Sunday night.

“The Ford government is threatening the lowest paid frontline education workers …they have the legislation all drawn up, which proves they had no intention of negotiating fairly with education workers,” she said.

Government puts forth a new contract offer

The government had been offering raises of two per cent a year for workers making less than $40,000 and 1.25 per cent for all others, but Lecce presented a new offer Sunday which would give 2.5-per-cent annual raises to workers making less than $43,000 and 1.5 per cent for all others.

Other than the proposal on wages, the government’s offer seeks to keep all other areas the same as the previous deal except for a cut to sick leave pay.

The province wants to institute what it’s calling a five-day “waiting period” for short-term disability, during which a worker would receive 25 per cent of their normal pay and 90 per cent for the rest of the 120 days.

CUPE has been seeking annual salary increases of 11.7 per cent as well as overtime at twice the regular pay rate, 30 minutes of paid prep time per day for educational assistants and ECEs, an increase in benefits and professional development for all workers.

Walton says this so-called “generous” offer is still significantly below what workers need to get out of poverty.

Walton says the union is prepared to return to the bargaining table on Monday along with the mediator instead of proceeding with what she called “undemocratic strongarming.”

“We encourage them to rethink taking this measure which will be extremely unpopular in the province of Ontario, and instead coming to the table in a way that they have yet to do and negotiate a real deal.

Negotiations between the union and the province are scheduled to resume on Tuesday, Nov. 1 after sessions with a mediator last week broke down with both sides still far apart on wages.

The impacted workers have been without a contract since Aug. 31.

Walton said CUPE will be “looking at every avenue to fight back,” and noted there were similar actions taken by the former Liberal government.

Education unions won a court challenge several years ago against the Liberal government over legislation known as Bill 115, which froze some of their wages and limited their ability to strike.

The judge ruled that the government “substantially interfered with meaningful collective bargaining” and Ontario was left having to pay more than $100 million in remedies to the unions.

During the last round of contract negotiations in 2019, CUPE and the government reached a last-minute deal the day before workers were set to strike.

Earlier, several more school boards across the province outlined their plans for a possible strike by education workers.

In a statement, the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board said it  “has no CUPE employees, so the CUPE strike does not impact them. In the OCDSB, the Ontario Secondary School Teachers Federation (OSSTF) union represents their support staff.” 

The Ottawa Catholic School Board (OCSB) said CUPE represents over 1300 full-time/term OCSB employees and 700 casual positions, and will legally be able to strike as of Nov. 4. 

“If a strike occurs, all OCSB in-person students will move to remote learning on Friday, Nov. 4,” a statement said. “We will do this because operating in-person learning without CUPE staff is unsafe. We will do our best to provide continuity of learning for all our students should there be labour disruptions.

Tom D'Amico, the director of education with the OCSB, told Wake Up With Rob Snow on Oct. 31 said the board's plan is to be ready for whatever happens over the next few days. 

“We want everyone to feel welcome,” he said. “We know this has been hard on parents and staff because it won't be business as usual until a deal is acceptable to both sides.”

Listen to the full interview with Tom D'Amico below: