THUNDER BAY — A vote by Ontario public high school teachers and education workers means a possible strike has been taken off the table, but the details of a new collective agreement with the province could still take months to settle.
A deal approved by members of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation (OSSTF) will see the agreement resolved through binding interest arbitration, if the parties can’t finalize it by Oct. 27.
OSSTF members across the province approved that deal with 78.4 per cent in favour after three weeks of voting, the union reported Wednesday.
The deal came after around 14 months of bargaining.
The proposal, while backed by OSSTF leaders, had divided members. The union’s Toronto teachers’ bargaining unit, for example, had opposed it over concerns the move would eliminate the option to strike.
OSSTF leaders have called the approach a response to impasses at the bargaining table, and pointed to recent favourable arbitration decisions for other unions.
“For over 14 months, we have tried to engage the Ford government in good faith bargaining but we haven’t had a partner at the table that cares about safeguarding our public education system,” OSSTF president Karen Littlewood said in a statement released Wednesday. “Now we have the opportunity to bypass traditional bargaining pathways to secure a fair collective agreement.”
The union added the deal includes a “remedy for wages lost” under Bill 124, which limited public sector wage increases but was struck down in court.
The deal impacts around 60,000 members represented by OSSTF, including teachers and a wide variety of education workers.
In Thunder Bay, over 1,000 members are represented by OSSTF District 6A, including teachers, occasional teachers, and early childhood educators at the Lakehead District School Board, and student support professionals at the Thunder Bay Catholic District School Board.
Over half of those members are education workers, while over a third are teachers.
Dinah Neilson, president of OSSTF District 6A, said members are concerned not only about wages but securing adequate school resources.
“There’s a number of issues — classroom conditions are huge,” she said. “Certainly deteriorating working conditions have been very challenging, in terms of staffing and retention.”
“We’re hoping this proposal creates a pathway to securing real investments in public education, in times when we’ve been chronically underfunded.”
Neilson pointed to research by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, a left-leaning think tank, that indicates provincial education grants to school boards have fallen by $1,200 per student since the Ford government took office in 2018, when adjusted for inflation.
Local table bargaining with school boards can continue until the end of March, 2024, at which point those issues will similarly be sent to arbitration.
In a statement, Minister of Education Stephen Lecce welcomed the OSSTF vote.
“We came together to put 400,000 English public high school students first, and as a result, a student who started high school last year will now graduate in three years without the threat of strikes,” he said.
