Ontario’s secondary school teachers recently held another round of one-day strikes in a number of school districts across the province, including Toronto. 

Jan. 21 was the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation’s (OSSTF) sixth strike action in just over a month, as the union and provincial government continue to disagree at the bargaining table over key issues, including compensation, mandatory e-learning courses and an increase in class sizes.  

“I think that the teachers are striking only to cause unnecessary chaos,” said Mateo Patel, whose 17-year-old son attends a high school in the Rexdale area. Patel also called teachers “selfish” for asking for more money when they “already make enough.” 

In an email statement, Ministry of Education spokesperson Ingrid Anderson, quoted Ontario Education Minister Stephen Lecce, that the province is aware of “the negative impacts teacher union escalation is having on families.” 

“It is why we are calling on these union leaders to end these strikes, given the adverse effects on students and financial hardship on parents,” the statement read. “While this union-led escalation happens far too often, we are committed to negotiating deals that keep students in class, while providing financial support for families for child care needs.”

Ontario’s NDP education critic Marit Stiles responded to the statement.  

“It takes two parties to actually negotiate, and the education union has made it very clear that if the government takes their cuts to classrooms, like class size increases and the cuts to courses and things like that off the table, then they’re willing to talk about what the government wants us to do,” Stiles said.  

The main entrance of the Ontario Legislative Building in Queen’s Park located in Toronto (Matthew Chong, 2020)

Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation president Harvey Bischof said, “while they continue to claim that compensation is the major issue, they clearly are committed to ongoing cuts to the quality of education in this province.”  

Stiles also criticized the minister’s response to providing compensation and financial support for families. 

Referring to compensation, she said, “everything we’ve heard, everything we’ve seen is really that’s not the major issue on the table.”  

Stiles called the work action “historic” and often used the word “disappointing” to express how she felt about how the Ford government was handling this issue. 

“I think it is very disappointing to see a government trying to spin messages in public rather than get down to bargaining at the negotiating table,” she said. 

OSSTF president Harvey Bischof said that the union and provincial government had originally scheduled two days at the bargaining table on Dec. 16 and 17, but the mediator “called off talks at that time” after reviewing just how far apart they were.

The possibility of larger class sizes is still one of the biggest hurdles between Ford’s government and the OSSTF during the negotiation talks. According to Bischof, the province proposed to eliminate thousands of high school teacher positions, which would increase class sizes.   

In March 2019, the Ford government announced a plan to make e-learning courses mandatory in order for students to graduate. Initially, students would have to complete four courses, but in Nov. 2019, the province brought it down to just two.

Bischof said that the OSSTF is asking for a “close to two per cent” wage increase because the union has proposed a “cost-of-living adjustment” so members would not have to “year after year wrangle about compensation.” 

“At some point, governments have to face the fact that this is the one power that a worker has in a situation like this,” Stiles said about the strikes.