To prevent a strike, the Ford administration will submit legislation on Monday that would require thousands of school support workers to sign a four-year contract. This action would certainly result in a legal challenge from the union.
The Canadian Union of Public Employees, which represents 55,000 custodians, administrative workers, librarians, and early childhood educators, delivered the government its strike notice on Friday, Nov. 4. This triggered a sudden uptick in the months-long contract negotiations.
After months of negotiations, Laura Walton of CUPE described the offer as a “ultimatum” from the Ford administration.
The government’s most recent proposal, which is now legally required for union employees, would increase salaries by 2.5% annually for those making less than $43,000 and by 1.5% annually for those making more than that amount.
That offer represents a small improvement over their prior offer of between 1.
Annual salary increases range from 5% to 2%, with $40,000 serving as the separating point.
Due to the rising cost of living and historically low compensation, CUPE petitioned the government for an 11% salary rise.
Education Minister Stephen Lecce said in a statement that the government made a “generous” offer and intended to retain pupils in school.
“Because CUPE refuses to withdraw their intent to strike, in order to avoid shutting down classes we will have no other choice but to introduce legislation tomorrow, which will ensure that students remain in-class to catch up on their learning,” Lecce said.
However, the union is threatening legal action against the government over the law and argues that the negotiations were not conducted in good faith.
At a late-Sunday news conference, Walton declared, “They had the legislation fully worked up, which proves they had no intention of negotiating fairly with education workers.”
While Lecce has been warning for weeks that government wouldn’t allow a strike to proceed given several years of school disruptions due to COVID-19, the Minister always maintained his mandate from the Premier was to reach a negotiated settlement with the union.
However, as contract negotiations dragged on, the administration changed its approach and concentrated more on averting a strike than on finding a solution.
The legislation, which will be presented at 1:00 p.m. Tomorrow is also a “signal” to teachers unions, who are still in the early phases of negotiations with the administration, according to a source.
Regarding the government’s efforts to impose contracts on other education-sector unions, the source stated, “Our intentions are obvious.”
By imposing a contract, Premier Doug Ford will be copying former-Premier Dalton McGuinty’s work from 2012, when the Ontario Liberals imposed a contract on teachers’ unions ahead of a strike.
Five unions from the education sector filed a lawsuit after Bill 115, the Putting Students First Act, which curtailed union members’ ability to strike and frozen pay, went into effect.
Bill 115 “seriously interfered with effective collective bargaining,” according to a later decision by an Ontario Superior Court judge, and the procedure of imposing a contract was “fundamentally flawed.”
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By design, it was unable to offer effective collective bargaining. Ontario came up with a procedure on its own.
In a 2016 ruling, Judge Thomas Lederer stated, “It set the conditions which would allow it to satisfy the financial restraints it determined and then structured a programme which limited the capacity of the other parties to participate in a meaningful fashion.
The Elementary Teachers Federation received a $103 million “remedy” earlier this year to provide to both previous and current union members.
In order to prevent the province-wide strike by CUPE that is now slated for November 4th, the Ford administration will have just four days to enact the legislation after it is laid before the legislature.
Ford will introduce legislation to require education sector unions to sign contracts.
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