By Allison Jones
Contracts for Ontario’s teachers and education workers expire at the end of this summer and their union leaders are calling on the education minister to start the bargaining process early, saying issues such as class sizes need to be urgently addressed.
The union presidents said Monday in a joint statement that they want to start negotiations early as a way to ensure stability in classrooms and boost student success.
It is a practical, responsible step, said Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation president Martha Hradowy.
“It gives everybody the time and space needed for meaningful discussions focused on solutions, like smaller class sizes and better learning conditions,” she said in an interview.
“We have to talk about recruitment and retention strategies for both teaching and education workers. We need, obviously, staffing investments across the full school team and quite frankly, improved health and safety supports and better education special education supports.”
The unions say they want Education Minister Paul Calandra to use his authority to issue a regulation allowing negotiations to start up to 180 days before the current collective agreements expire on Aug. 31, which means the process could start as early as this week.
But Calandra’s office said filing for notice to bargain 90 days before contract expiry, as is set out in the Labour Relations Act, would provide enough time “to get to a fair and reasonable agreement prior to the expiry.”
The last round of education bargaining was lengthy and included a strike by education workers represented by the Canadian Union of Public Employees, closing schools for two days.
That job action ended after the government promised to repeal a law that imposed contracts on CUPE members, banned them from striking and used the notwithstanding clause to allow the override of certain Charter rights.
Calandra has signalled that he will announce a major school board governance shakeup soon, including possibly all but eliminating the role of trustees. The timing of that may well intersect with bargaining, said Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario president David Mastin.
“If the government is successful in eliminating parent voice in democracy, in public education at the local level, that’s going to have a profound impact on public education moving forward,” he said in an interview.
“It will also have a profound impact on bargaining, because trustees are integral to the bargaining process, both at the central and the local level.”
Bargaining priorities for ETFO will include compensation, recruitment and retention strategies, and class sizes, Mastin said.
OSSTF, meanwhile, will also be focusing on class sizes, said Hradowy, particularly as it relates to destreaming. The province eliminated the need for students to choose between applied and academic streams in Grade 9 and Hradowy said that introduced a lot of complexity into those classes that teachers could handle more easily if class sizes were smaller.
“When the government introduced destreaming just after the pandemic, the supports, investments and professional development did not come with that implementation,” she said.
“We want an opportunity to sit down with the government and talk about what it means to implement destreaming appropriately. If the policy goal is equity, then the funding and staffing have to match it.”
NDP education critic Chandra Pasma said early bargaining gives all sides an opportunity to work together to reach a fair deal.
“If the government gives the green light for early negotiations, it allows both sides to bargain in good faith and focus on what matters most: student outcomes, safe classrooms, and a strong public education system,” she wrote in a statement.
