The Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation is taking the final legal step to clear the way for strikes in the seven hand-picked regions, with two boards already a week into a mandatory 17-day countdown, union president Paul Elliott said.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
High school teachers in the Peel District School Board are serving notice they will strike on May 4, becoming the third group of teachers to walk out of the classroom or threaten to do so in just a matter of weeks.
As the pressure builds across the province – secondary school teachers in at least one other district are expected to serve their strike notice as early as next week – Ontario Education Minister Liz Sandals says she can do nothing about it.
She told reporters on Tuesday the province is part of a different set of negotiations – and that high school teachers will have to sort out their differences with their local boards and not the province.
"In each case, these are local strikes, and the law, which now governs collective bargaining, is quite clear, is that local strikes are on local issues," she said.
This is the first time the province, school boards and teachers' unions have negotiated under new legislation passed last year. It divides the process into a parallel set of talks. Issues such as day-to-day working conditions are considered local and are negotiated between the teachers' local bargaining units and the school boards. The other issues, such as wages and class size, are negotiated at the so-called central table, which is where the province sits.
"At the central table we continue to … make progress," Ms. Sandals said. "I continue to be committed to reaching a negotiated collective agreement."
This may not give much comfort to students and parents. A strike in Peel would mean the cancellation of classes at 36 high schools in Mississauga, Brampton and Caledon, affecting about 42,000 students.
OSSTF District 19 (Peel) president Mike Bettiol said about 2,700 secondary school teachers and more than 500 occasional teachers could be out of the classroom. One day is set for bargaining this week, but Mr. Bettiol said he was discouraged by the pace of progress.
In Durham, more than 1,500 high school teachers walked off the job on Monday, leaving about 24,000 students out of the classroom.
Michael Barrett, president of the Ontario Public School Boards' Association, is also the chair of the Durham board. He says his board wants to get back to the table, but he is not hopeful the teachers share that view.
"I see no indications at this point, [of] an appetite for them [teachers] to return to the table," he said.
And teachers in the Rainbow District in Northern Ontario have indicated they will strike on Monday if no local deal is reached.
OSSTF District 3 (Rainbow) president James Clyke said the school board's approach to setting bargaining dates before has been "lethargic." There are still scheduled bargaining days at the local table this week, but some are after the strike deadline.
Meanwhile, opposition critics say they believe Ms. Sandals knows exactly what is going on at the local level.
"I think she is not being very upfront with the people of Ontario when she professes to not understand or not know what is happening," NDP Leader Andrea Horwath said. "She knows darn well what is happening. …"
Ms. Horwath said government cuts to the education system are fuelling the strikes or threats of strikes.
Garfield Dunlop, the Progressive Conservative education critic, said Ms. Sandals has a role to play in preventing strikes.
"To her, it's a board negotiation problem," he said. "She provides the money to the boards. It's her problem as well."