Tens of thousands of unionized education workers are getting ready to start job action on Monday if a deal isn't reached with the province.
Vote results on September 16, 2019 showed that secretaries, education assistants, early childhood educators, custodians, maintenance workers, IT employees, and librarians, voted 93 per cent in favour of job action.
"The countless hours of services and supports lost to Ontario students because of Ford government cuts are the focus of [the] job action," said the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), which represents the 55,000 workers across Ontario.
A notice was issued Wednesday morning to meet the required five days the province needs to put the workers in a legal strike position on Monday to begin their work-to-rule campaign at 63 school boards across Ontario.
“We’ve always said that any job action we take will have at its heart the protection of education services for students,” said Laura Walton, president of CUPE’s Ontario School Board Council of Unions (OSBCU), which bargains centrally on behalf of the union’s 55,000 education workers.
Walton said there's a "big disconnect" between the Ford Conservatives' words and what CUPE is seeing in bargaining and that the concessions being asked will hurt the education system.
“This year we’ve seen those services decimated: school libraries closed over students’ lunch breaks because there aren’t enough library workers; school cleaning cut to the point that custodians are told they can only vacuum kindergarten classrooms once a week; eight or nine students with special needs now supported by a single education assistant; communications with parents affected because some schools have lost their school secretaries," added Walton.
Bargaining talks are set to resume this weekend in an attempt to reach a deal that will ward off job action.
“If it takes job action to restore these services, then so be it. This is something worth fighting for," Walton said.
Walton said she and her fellow CUPE members are committed to following through on their plans for work to rule if no deal is reached.
“Minister Lecce says he wants stability and predictability, but we have yet to hear anything that says that he’s ready to secure the education services that students and families rely on,” said Walton. “That is what CUPE education workers are seeking from this process – not simply for themselves, but for the students they serve.”
News on the education front doesn't get any better either.
The Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario (ETFO) is holding its province-wide strike vote with elementary teachers and education workers from September 30 through October.