THUNDER BAY – The head of a local union representing education workers says she’s appalled at the way the Conservative government chose to bargain through the media.
Maureen Denford-Cox is president of the Thunder Bay Catholic District School Board’s student support professional bargaining unit, representing student support professionals, early childhood educators and attendance counsellors at the board. She said her membership has been left with little or no official information after Minister of Education Stephen Lecce offered up concessions in front of television cameras on Tuesday afternoon.
“We have no information, we really don’t know what next fall is going to be like. We did have layoffs this past September and I was able to get our members back. But at this point it’s still a waiting game,” Denford Cox said.
While Lecce offered to scale back planned class-size minimums to 23, down from the 28 his government initially proposed, and allow students to opt out of e-learning courses rather than making them mandatory as outlined in Ontario’s education plan, he held firm on pay increases.
While many teachers might be able to live with a one per cent increase, Denford-Cox said education workers make far less, topping out around $40,000 a year – and must either take second and third jobs in the summer or go on unemployment insurance because the paycheques stop when school lets out.
Teachers, on the other hand, are paid year round.
“There’s nothing there at the table for us,” she said.
“We’re looking for an increase.”
Denford-Cox said because the pay is so low and not year-round, they’re also unable to find regular supply workers to fill in when someone calls in sick, which can lead to major issues in Thunder Bay schools.
“We’re competing with outside agencies to get people to come in and cover our jobs when we’re sick and ill, and I’ve got serious concerns with what’s coming down the pipe with illness, with Covid-19,” she said.
“When we have staff positions that aren’t being filled because of absent members, the pressures in the classroom are just going to be astronomical.”
Rich Seeley, who represents teachers through the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation bargaining unit 6A, was equally unhappy with the tactics of Lecce, who on Wednesday urged the four largest education unions to call of planned strike action.
The Ontario English Catholic Teachers Association plans to walk off the job province-wide on Thursday, while the OSSTF is holding rotating strikes in various parts of the province, though not in Thunder Bay this week.
“It appears they made some concessions. What Stephen Lecce did yesterday at the podium – not at the bargaining table – was throw some ideas out there that the government thought might get them a deal,” Seeley said.
“And while it is some progress for the teachers’ side, the fact is their own consultations, which they had in their hands for eight months, told them emphatically nobody in the public wants cuts to public to education, no one wants mandatory e-learning.”
Seeley said it was when the province was court-ordered to release the consultation findings that the Ford government began to back down.
“And we’re still disappointed that the cuts are still cuts. Across the province, at 23-1, that’ll be a thousand teachers lost. Locally, that’s probably about three for my bargaining unit ... It’s a move in the right direction, but it’s not been done at the bargaining table and that what our problem is. There was not a proposal handed to OSSTF at a bargaining table,” Seeley said.
