High school teachers on path to avoid strike after OSSTF recommends arbitration in contract talks

The union representing Ontario public high school teachers says it has reached a tentative deal to enter arbitration in its talks with the provincial government over a new contract.

At a special meeting Friday, the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation voted overwhelmingly to recommend that members enter into a proposal to resolve bargaining with the Ontario government until October 27 and if no deal is reached, the remaining issues would be settled by binding arbitration.

The proposal is not a tentative agreement but establishes a clear pathway forward for this round of bargaining.

The union will now begin preparations for an internal membership vote that will take place through September.

Education Minister Stephen Lecce says if the agreement is ratified, students and families will have peace of mind that the high school experience will be free from the threat of teacher strikes.

“That means 60,000 members and all of their students will remain in the classroom focused on learning.”

Lecce added that a similar offer is being made to the other teacher unions currently in talks with the government.

“Now that we have a tentative agreement with OSSTF, we have invited all three teacher federations to meet with us as early as Monday so that we can lay out this proposed agreement and ask them to agree to it as well. This should not take those unions weeks but rather days to agree to this incredibly fair, reasonable student-focused proposal that keeps kids in school.”

Talks between the four major teachers’ unions and the Ford government have been going on for months with little to no progress.

Among the central issues in negotiations is wages with union officials claiming teachers and education workers have not seen any significant increases to keep up with the cost of living and inflation over the last decade.

Class sizes also remain a major problem, with not enough staff to support students.

OSSTF/FEESO President Karen Littlewood was quick to point out that this is not a tentative agreement but a pathway to breaking an impasse with the government towards a “fair and just resolution.”

“This proposal is not a tentative agreement. We have not reached a deal and in fact, we will continue to bargain but this proposal does establish a clear pathway forward for this round of bargaining that could potentially end in arbitration,” said Littlewood.

“We’re nowhere near a deal. I hope this changes when we get back to the bargaining table in September and we really do have substantive bargaining.”

Littlewood said the proposal would also give OSSTF members a remedy for “wages lost” under Bill 124. That 2019 law capped salary increases for teachers and other public sector workers to one per cent a year for three years. It was ruled unconstitutional by an Ontario court, but the government has appealed.

Lecce says the cost of potentially entering arbitration to resolve contract talks is a better outcome than the cost of going through protracted negotiations and strikes with the unions.

“I think the cost of strikes, the economic impact to working parents, the mental health impacts, the physical impacts, the academic regression in reading, writing and math – there’s a huge cost to neverending strikes in Ontario.”

Meanwhile, Ontario elementary teachers say they will be holding strike votes from mid-September to mid-October after the Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario accused the Ford government of stalling on negotiations.

Education workers represented by the Canadian Union of Public Employees were the first to get a deal in this round of contract negotiations, with CUPE saying the deal came with a $1-per-hour raise each year, or about 3.59 per cent annually, for the average worker.