Ontario education workers hit the picket lines Friday morning in the first day of an indefinite strike that has closed schools on boards across the province.
Education workers represented by the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) were picketing politicians’ offices, including hundreds outside the education minister’s constituency office in Vaughan, Ontario, along with a large protest planned for the legislature, where there were already hundreds of people. gathered on the lawn.
That’s where, a day earlier, the Progressive Conservative government enacted Bill 28, a law that imposed contracts on 55,000 CUPE members and prohibited them from striking.
The law also uses the notwithstanding clause to protect against constitutional challenges, a legal mechanism that has only been used twice in Ontario’s history, both times by the governments of Premier Doug Ford.
But CUPE says the law is an attack on the bargaining rights of all workers and is organizing a strike anyway, warning it will likely last more than a day.
Aaron Guppy, a janitor for the York District School Board, picketed outside Education Minister Stephen Lecce’s office Friday morning.
“If they take away our rights as a union, every other union is next. They’re not going to stop with just us,” he said.
Members of many other unions joined CUPE members on the pickets this morning.
“We’re just here basically to show that we’re not going to back down, that we’re not going to accept this terrible deal. The people support us,” Guppy said.
CUPE members and supporters rally outside Queen’s Park on November 4, 2022. (Linda Ward/CBC)
Maria Gallant, a school secretary, was at Queen’s Park early this morning. She told CBC News that the strike may be illegal after the government passed Bill 28, but CUPE members were left with no choice but to take action.
“We’re here because we have the right to strike and we have the right to negotiate our contract,” Gallant said.
“We need our voices to be heard and the government to realize that this is not acceptable… We are just asking to be paid what we deserve, nothing more.”
The government claims the labor board
Bill 28 sets fines for violating a ban on strikes during the life of the agreement of up to $4,000 per employee per day, while there are fines of up to $500,000 for the union.
Lecce has suggested the government would indeed pursue such sanctions, while the union has said it would foot the bill for fines imposed on workers, which could cost up to $220 million a day.
For its part, CUPE plans to fight the fines, but at the end of the day, the union has said that if it has to pay, it will. CUPE leaders have previously suggested the union is seeking external financial help from other labor groups.
In a statement issued early Friday, Lecce said the ministry has already made a submission to the Ontario Labor Relations Board in response to the “illegal strike.”
He reiterated that the government will “use all available tools” to return students to classrooms.
CUPE members demonstrate outside the electoral office of Ottawa MP Lisa MacLeod on November 4, 2022. (Francis Ferland/CBC/Radio-Canada)
Fred Hahn, president of CUPE Ontario, called Friday’s action a “political protest.”
“If they want to say that the strikes are illegal, they need to understand that people still have the right to protest their rights, to demand something better from our government. A government that has a $2.1 billion surplus, a government refusing to really invest in our schools,” Hahn said.
Many school boards in the province, including the Toronto District School Board and most boards in eastern Ontario, have said schools will be closed during a strike, while others plan to move to remote learning
The Ministry of Education has urged school boards to “implement contingency plans, where every effort is made to keep schools open for as many children as possible” and, otherwise, “must support students in a rapid transition to distance learning”.
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Speaking to CBC News, Hahn stressed that CUPE would return to bargaining “in a heartbeat” if the government repeals Bill 28 and said none of the union’s members want to be on strike. He also appealed directly to parents who may be frustrated after two years of pandemic-related learning disruptions.
“I would remind them that none of our people want to do this, that a government that stripped us of our rights forced us into a corner,” Hahn said.
“I would remind them that it’s not just about keeping kids in schools, because schools are just buildings. It’s about the people in those schools.”
CUPE Members Lowest Education Workers: Union
The government initially offered annual increases of two percent for workers earning less than $40,000 and 1.25 percent for others, but Lecce said the new four-year deal would see annual increases of 2.5 percent to workers making less than $43,000 and 1.5 percent hikes for everyone else.
CUPE has said the framing is not accurate because the increases actually depend on hourly wages and pay scales, so most workers earning less than $43,000 in a year would not get 2.5 per one hundred.
CUPE has said its workers, who earn an average of $39,000 a year, are generally the lowest paid in schools and had been seeking annual pay rises of 11.7 per cent.
The union said it more than halved its pay proposal in a counteroffer it made to the government on Tuesday night and made “substantial” moves in other areas as well. However, the government said it would not negotiate unless CUPE called off the strike.
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Supporters of Ontario education workers protested on the dais of the provincial legislature Thursday, moments after Premier Doug Ford missed a final vote to pass legislation that would outlaw the strike of 55,000 workers of education and imposed a contract on them.