Tentative Deal With Ontario Education Workers Will Avert Strike, Keep Schools Open

Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) education workers strike on the picket line in Kingston, Ont., on Nov. 4, 2022. The Canadian Press/Lars Hagberg

At nearly the final hour of bargaining, before a scheduled strike of 55,000 education support workers would have shut down most Ontario schools tomorrow, the government said a tentative agreement has been reached with the union after intense weekend bargaining.

At a news conference today, Education Minister Stephen Lecce said the deal “will provide stability for children” and keep 2 million kids in the classroom.

He said he would not provide further details while the union members vote on the tentative contract, but that the government “brought forth a deal [so] that every party leaves the table with something that they wanted to advance.”

Voting by union members is expected to begin on Nov. 24 and be completed by next weekend, but in the meantime kids will be back in school as usual tomorrow.

Lecce said that “after two very difficult years of pandemic disruption,” children needed to be back in school and with their friends.

“They’ve been through so much, mental, physical impacts as well as academic regression. And so the government said we would do everything humanly possible, our premier made a commitment to do everything humanly possible, to keep kids in class.”

The biggest beneficiary of the agreement reached with education workers will be kids and families, Lece said.

Wage Increase

Laura Walton, spokesperson for the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), said she was disappointed there was no new funding to “guarantee that services will be provided in schools for students,” CBC reported.

The tentative offer, according to CUPE, provides workers with a $1-per-hour raise annually for four years, working out to an increase of 3.59 percent a year.

Besides wage increases, the union was still seeking $100 million in funding to guarantee higher staffing levels for educational assistants, librarians, custodians, and secretaries. It was also looking for having an early childhood educator in every kindergarten classroom, not only classes with more than 16 students.

In a statement published on Twitter at 5:35 p.m. today, the union said: “There will be no job action tomorrow. Our members will be reporting to schools to continue supporting the students that we are proud to work with.”

The statement asked union members to watch for more information on webinars and ratification vote details that will come shortly. “This fight has always been focused on the workers,” it said.

“We should not normalize strikes on children. These have real impacts, especially on the most vulnerable, especially on kids with special education, mental health needs,” Lecce had said on Nov. 17. “I really want the emphasis to be on children. Because to date, it has been pretty much exclusively about the desire for higher wages.”

The union provided a five-day strike notice on Nov. 16, following a two-day walk-out that shut down many schools in Ontario just two weeks before that.

“This is a positive outcome. We are grateful to all of the parties for working with the government,” said Lecce at the press conference today.