The Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation and Lakehead Public Schools have reached a tentative agreement.
Details of the agreement will remain confidential until it has been ratified. However, job sanctions have been lifted as of Friday pending ratification.
Both the union and school board are encouraged by the deal.
“While we maintain the conditions the Minister (of Education) established to govern negotiations were unfair, we remained confident throughout that time we could sit down with our local employer and come to terms on an agreement that struck the appropriate balance to meet the fiscal targets,” said Paul Caccamo, bargaining unit president for the Thunder Bay OSSTF teachers.
“We’re certainly glad we’re moving past this phase,” he said.
Caccamo said he feels they were able to achieve a contract that meets the priorities of the union members.
“When we bring it to our members in the coming days, we’ll be able to articulate that this deal addresses the same fiscal challenges that face all school boards in the province but does so in a manner that is more suitable to not just us, but our local employer as well,” he said.
Lakehead Public Schools director of education Cathi Siemieniuk said the board also wants to move forward with the process.
“I think this was a situation where both sides came with their priorities and part of the negotiation process is try to arrive at a common ground,” she said.
“We have nine collective agreements that we need to bring forward. Obviously, we like to have stability in our system, so we’re looking forward to arriving at an end point with all of them,” Siemieniuk added.
The tentative agreement needs pre-approval from the Minister of Education Laurel Broten and then ratified by the OSSTF members and school board trustees.
While the teachers have reached a tentative agreement, support staff will begin talks with the school board next week.
