{"id":11700,"date":"2020-01-26T13:30:25","date_gmt":"2020-01-26T13:30:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.gh360.ca\/?p=11700"},"modified":"2020-11-11T21:53:12","modified_gmt":"2020-11-11T21:53:12","slug":"no-end-in-sight-as-negotiations-talks-stall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gh360.ca\/?p=11700","title":{"rendered":"No end in sight as negotiations talks stall"},"content":{"rendered":"

O<\/span>ntario\u2019s secondary school teachers recently held another round of one-day strikes in a number of school districts across the province, including Toronto.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Jan. 21 was the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation’s (OSSTF) sixth strike action in just over a month, as t<\/span>he 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.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI think that the teachers are striking only to cause unnecessary chaos,\u201d said Mateo Patel, whose 17-year-old son attends a high school in the Rexdale area. Patel also called teachers \u201cselfish\u201d for asking for more money when they \u201calready make enough.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In an email statement, Ministry of Education spokesperson <\/span>Ingrid Anderson<\/span>, quoted Ontario Education Minister Stephen Lecce<\/span>, <\/span>that the province is aware of \u201c<\/span>the negative impacts teacher union escalation is having on families.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt is why we are calling on these union leaders to end these strikes, given the adverse effects on students and financial hardship on parents,\u201d the statement read. \u201cWhile 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.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote><\/div><\/strong><\/p>\n

Ontario\u2019s NDP education critic Marit Stiles responded to the statement.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt 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\u2019re willing to talk about what the government wants us to do,\u201d Stiles said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"

The main entrance of the Ontario Legislative Building in Queen’s Park located in Toronto (Matthew Chong, 2020)<\/p><\/div>\n

Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation president Harvey Bischof said, \u201cwhile 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.\u201d <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Stiles also criticized the minister\u2019s response to providing compensation and financial support for families.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Referring to compensation, she said, \u201ceverything we\u2019ve heard, everything we\u2019ve seen is really that\u2019s not the major issue on the table.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Stiles called the work action \u201chistoric\u201d and <\/span>often used the word \u201cdisappointing\u201d to express how she felt about how the Ford government was handling this issue.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201c<\/span>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,\u201d she said.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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 <\/span>\u201ccalled off talks at that time\u201d after reviewing just how far apart they were.<\/span><\/p>\n

The possibility of larger class sizes is still one of the biggest hurdles between Ford\u2019s 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.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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.<\/span><\/p>\n

Bischof said that the OSSTF is asking for a \u201cclose to two per cent\u201d wage increase because <\/span>the union has proposed a “cost-of-living adjustment”<\/span> so members would not have to \u201cyear after year wrangle about compensation.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201c<\/span>At some point, governments have to face the fact that this is the one power that a worker has in a situation like this,\u201d Stiles said about the strikes.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ontario\u2019s secondary school teachers recently held another round of one-day strikes in a number of school districts across the province, including Toronto.\u00a0 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":88,"featured_media":11735,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[47],"tags":[56,207,572,390,613],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gh360.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11700"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gh360.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gh360.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gh360.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/88"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gh360.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11700"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.gh360.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11700\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gh360.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gh360.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gh360.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gh360.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}