The Ontario government is expected to pass legislation Thursday that will impose a contract on 55,000 education workers ahead of a planned walkout — a bill that the Canadian Civil Liberties Association is calling a “catastrophe for rights and freedoms.”
Bill 28 would make strike action illegal, though the Canadian Union of Public Sector Employees (CUPE) has said workers will walk off the job Friday regardless. Early childhood educators, educational assistants and custodians are among those taking part in the strike.
The Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU) announced today that its 8,000 education workers will also be off the job Friday in solidarity with their CUPE counterparts. Their largest contingent of members are in the Peel and York district school boards, which have both already said the strike would close schools.
The Toronto District School Board, the province’s largest, says it will keep schools closed for the duration of the strike because it can’t ensure student safety. Many other boards across the province also plan to close schools or move to remote learning for Friday.
OPSEU president JP Hornick said the legislation tabled by the government is undemocratic.
“Bill 28 isn’t just an attack on education workers’ collective bargaining rights, it is an attack on all workers’ rights,” Hornick said in a statement.
That sentiment was echoed by representatives from the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, who held an emergency news conference at Queen’s Park this morning.
“By imposing a contract, banning strikes and eliminating meaningful oversight, the government is violating workers’ Charter right to freedom of association. This is both unconscionable and completely unnecessary,” said Noa Mendelsohn Aviv, executive director and general counsel for the organization.
The legislation also includes the Constitution’s notwithstanding clause, which allows the legislature to override portions of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms for a five-year term. To date, the clause has only been used once in Ontario, also by the current government, and if the legislation passes it will mark the second time it has been invoked.
The CCLA called the notwithstanding clause a “nuclear weapon” that was meant to be a “rare and exceptional power,” and that its use in this instance is a gross overstep by the province.
Mendelsohn Aviv said the bill will “trample workers’ rights” and she called on the government to immediately withdraw it.
CUPE said the workers plan to be off the job beyond Friday unless a deal is reached, but Education Minister Stephen Lecce said he won’t negotiate further unless the union cancels its strike. He said the government “has no choice” but to proceed with its legislation.
The province’s bill includes steep fines if workers do not comply. A spokesperson for Lecce said the ministry intends to pursue the fines in the case that the strike goes ahead.
The government originally offered raises of two per cent a year for workers making less than $40,000 and 1.25 per cent for all others, but says the new, imposed four-year deal would give 2.5 per cent annual raises to workers making less than $43,000 and 1.5 per cent raises for all others.
CUPE has said that framing is not accurate because the raises actually depend on hourly wages and pay scales, so the majority of workers who earn less than $43,000 in a year wouldn’t get 2.5 per cent.
CUPE has said its workers, which make on average $39,000 a year, are generally the lowest paid in schools and have been seeking annual salary increases of 11.7 per cent.
