WELLINGTON COUNTY – On Nov. 4, 302 education workers represented by the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) and employed by Wellington County’s two school boards could walk off the job.
On Oct. 30, following a breakdown in collective agreement negotiations, CUPE’s Ontario School Board Council of Unions (OSBCU)—representing 55,000 education workers province-wide, including assistants, early childhood educators, caretakers, school library workers, and clerical staff—provided the province five-days of required notice in advance of a looming Friday strike.
All contracts with education unions in the province expired in August.
UGDSB
At the Upper Grand District School Board (UGDSB) there are 224 custodial and maintenance staff who are represented by CUPE.
However, around half of the board’s 76 elementary and secondary schools are maintained by non-union employees working for a third-party vendor, according to the UGDSB website.
For a complete listing of all schools with CUPE education workers, click here.
There are also 18 English-as-a-second-language instructors for adults who are represented by CUPE, working within the board’s continuing education program at adult education centres.
The board intends to keep schools and programs open, but states on its website that without education workers “this will become very difficult.”
Should a strike occur, community use of schools with CUPE custodial staff will be cancelled, adult ESL classes through continuing education (including classes at St. George’s Centre, Tytler Public School and the Wellington Centre for Continuing Education) will be cancelled. Before- and after-school programming and child care will remain open.
“We appreciate that this news and potential disruption can be very upsetting,” the board’s website states, calling on people to respect potential picketing lines or protests and demonstrations.
The UGDSB is posting updates to labour relations and impacts to its schools at ugdsb.ca/board/labour-updates-2022-23.
WCDSB
At the Wellington Catholic District School Board (WCDSB), there are 60 custodial and maintenance workers employed by the board at 14 elementary and three secondary schools.
“Our custodial and maintenance staff are responsible for daily maintenance of the school, including waste management, water flushing, cleaning of classrooms and washrooms, responding to health and safety concerns and the security of our buildings,” WCDSB spokesperson Ali Wilson wrote in an Oct. 31 press release.
Staff at St. Joseph, St. Mary (in Elora and Mount Forest) and St. John schools are not represented by CUPE and are likely to be unaffected by a strike.
Wilson wrote that WCDSB schools are required to stay open “until such point that we cannot reasonably operate due to concerns related to health and safety or operational conditions within our schools.”
On Nov. 4, WCDSB schools and before- and after-school programming will remain open, Wilson stated, adding closures could occur next week if a strike continued. Education would be provided through remote learning until schools could reopen.
“We encourage parents to prepare for this possible outcome,” Wilson stated, adding “our staff will do their best to support our students through any potential period of school closure.”
Updates are being posted at wellingtoncdsb.ca and on social media.
Bargaining issues
CUPE is seeking an 11.7 per cent annual increase, or about $3.25 per hour, for education workers over the next four years, working out to a 46.8 per cent total wage increase. The union is also seeking increased overtime pay, paid prep time for educational support staff and early childhood educators, increased support staff, and early childhood educators in every kindergarten classroom.
Responding on Sunday to the union’s announced intent to strike, the province returned with a final offer of a 2.5 per cent yearly wage increase (10 per cent over four years) for employees earning less than $43,000, and 1.5% for those earning more—an offer Education Minister Stephen Lecce said is “affordable” and “quite fair” when speaking to reporters at Queen’s Park on Oct. 31.
“We enhanced our offer, and [the union] still refused,” Lecce said Monday, announcing newly-tabled legislation, the Keeping Students in Class Act (Bill 28), intended to thwart a strike and force a contract on education workers.
To push its agenda forward, the Progressive Conservatives would use, for a third time, the notwithstanding clause in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, allowing the province to suspend charter rights for five years.
The new labour legislation would override constitutional rights granted by the Charter, which otherwise would protect the right to strike, and make it more difficult for the union to build a legal case. The Ontario legislature convened on Tuesday at 5am to debate Bill 28.
The previous Liberal government, led at the time by then premier Dalton McGuinty, forced contracts on education workers in 2012 which courts later ruled had violated workers’ rights, resulting in the government having to pay education unions over $100 million in taxpayer dollars.
On Monday, Lecce said the government was left with “no choice” and that without legislation “schools will close on Friday.”
“We will not tolerate a day of a strike,” he said.
The province pleaded with the union, Lecce told reporters, calling its strike decision “unacceptable” and “unfair.”
He believes it was the “intention of the union all along” to strike regardless of the province’s offer.
Lecce maintains the Progressive Conservatives are standing up for students by suspending Charter rights and freedoms and forcing a contract on workers, claiming that meeting the union’s ask would cost taxpayers billions.
CUPE says strike will continue
But the union argues wage increases over the past nine years haven’t kept pace with inflation and that its education workers are the lowest paid in the sector. The union claims workers are struggling to make ends meet, with the majority of its workforce having an additional job.
The union has stated the province’s offer is insulting, amounting to an increase of 33¢ to 53¢ an hour.
In an Oct. 31 press release, CUPE Ontario president Fred Hahn said he doesn’t buy Lecce’s “no choice” sentiment.
“He has a choice to offer an adequate salary increase that compensates for over a decade of wage cuts. He has a choice to invest in education to ensure adequate staffing levels from the classrooms to the libraries. And he has a choice to continue negotiations without having the threat of ramming through a contract full of concessions and wage cuts over the heads of frontline workers,” Hahn stated.
CUPE National president Mark Hancock, in a separate Oct. 31 release, called the province’s move “an appalling display of contempt for workers’ rights, for the collective bargaining process, and for the workers who look after our kids and keep our schools running.”
“Going full-nuclear and threatening the lowest-paid education workers in the province with fines and the Notwithstanding Clause is just disgraceful, even for this premier and this education minister,” Hancock added.
Though Lecce wouldn’t clarify when asked by reporters on Monday if the government had closed the door on negotiations with the union, the minister did say he hopes “cooler heads” will prevail and that people would come to their senses in the days ahead.
The minister called on education workers to “do the right thing” and remain in schools come Friday.
“I’m appealing on a moral basis to the workers who I know love these kids that they will do the right thing, show up, make a difference, and continue to enrich the lives of a child,” he said.
The union says the Friday strike will go forward despite the legislation and that it would cover hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines which could be levied against the union and its members should Bill 28 pass.
“On Friday, regardless of what this government does, we will be engaging in province-wide political protest where no CUPE education worker will be on the job until we get a real deal,” CUPE Ontario president Hahn stated, adding three more days of bargaining remains.
“Our members will not have their rights legislated away. Now’s the time to stand up for ourselves and public education and that’s just what we’re going to do.”
In a statement posted to its website on Nov. 1, the OSBCU stated it “remains committed to a negotiated collective agreement” and called on the government to “withdraw its threat to impose a bad contract and come to the bargaining table.”
Clarification (Nov. 2): This story has been updated from a previous version to clarify that not all schools within the Upper Grand District School Board have education workers who are represented by the Canadian Union of Public Employees, and furthermore that English-as-a-second-language instructors work at adult learning centres, not the board’s schools.
