Labour board still deciding if high school teachers’ strike legal
Posted May 19, 2015 6:36 am.
Last Updated May 20, 2015 6:46 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
The Ontario Labour Relations Board is still deciding on the legality of strikes by public high school teachers in Durham, Peel and Sudbury.
The hearing wrapped for the evening around 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday and will resume on Thursday morning.
If the strike is ruled unlawful, Peel District School Board Chair Janet McDougald doesn’t expect classes to resume this week.
“No, I don’t think by late this week, but […] I’m hoping certainly thereafter or certainly before the end of the school year,” she said.
After a two-week standstill, the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation (OSSTF) said central bargaining talks were resuming on Wednesday with the help of a new negotiator.
The president of the high school teachers union said this is a step in the right direction, but there are still big ticket items on the table they don’t want to give up.
Meanwhile, high school teachers in the Halton and Ottawa-Carleton school boards will begin work-to-rule action on Thursday.
As a result, teachers will not prepare comments for report cards, participate in staff meetings and will walk the picket line at lunch. However, all extracurricular activities and field trips are still going ahead as planned.
High school teachers with the Durham, Sudbury and Peel boards are still off the job, and students are getting worried about how they will make up for lost time.
Meanwhile, Ontario public elementary school teachers continue their work-to-rule job action with no end in sight. Central bargaining talks were halted last week just hours after they resumed.
The Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario said this is just phase one of its strike action. There is no word on when phase two will begin or what that would entail.
With files from Kalie Stephan
