Unprecedented and historic show of solidarity by teachers unions highlight unity

BY PAUL JUNOR

It was truly a sight to bestow as over 35,000 teachers, school staff, students and education workers descend upon Queen’s Park on Friday, February 21^st 2020 in a province wide strike.

This singular event was the first mass strike ever in the history of Ontario as approximately 200,000 education workers from across Ontario showed an ‘historic show of unity’ according to an article published on Saturday, December 22^nd   in the Toronto Star. It was the first time that four of the largest teacher unions came together to put additional pressure on the Ford government to force it to reconsider its drastic changes to public education.

The unions include: AEFO, which represents approximately 8,000 French-board teachers, the Ontario English Catholic Teachers’ Association (OECTA) with 45,000 teachers, the Ontario Secondary School Teachers Federation (OSSTF) with 60,000 teachers and the Elementary Teachers Association of Ontario (ETFO) with 45,000 members. The unity shown by the unions was intended to send a strong, clear, coherent message to the government.

The one-day strike by approximately 125,000 teachers across the province was the first time that teachers unions came together since 1997. At that time, even though they were not in a legal strike position, there was a full withdrawal of services for two weeks.  The historic one-day strike action comes after ongoing job actions, which have been occurring since November 2019.

These rotating strikes, report cards with no comments and cancellation of many extracurricular activities have all been the result of teacher’s union’s job actions. As a result of this one-day strike, there was the closure of approximately 5,000 public schools, which resulted in over two million students getting a day off.

It was truly amazing to see about 20,000 teachers lining the 30 kilometres stretch along Highway 10, from Lake Ontario to Caledon. This one-day strike still will not deter the rotating strikes from continuing. ETFO announced that it will escalate its job action to “phase six” and will announce on Monday, February 24^th what this will entail.

As reported in the Toronto Star, Harvey Bischof, (President of OSSTF) announced, “It’s time the government listened to front-line educators and to parents because they are speaking with largely one voice about what they want.” OSSTF has not negotiated with the government since December 16^th. The English and Catholic teacher unions met with the government on February 19^th and 20^th and canceled their planned rotating strike.

OSSTF will continue with their next rotating strike on Friday, February 28^th at certain selected boards in the province. The minister of education (as reported in the Saturday, February 22^nd Toronto Sun) expressed confidence that there has been progress in the negotiations. “The fact that they opted to pause that momentum, in effect to strike today I think is really unfair to kids.”

There is no end in sight for these job actions as there is a clear impasse and stalemate between the teachers union and government. With March break, less than three weeks away and the fact that the job action has been going on since November, there is no quick resolution. This will undoubtedly continue into the spring.

For the teacher’s unions it is not simply just a desire for a pay increase beyond the 1% that the government has offered, but: the reduction of services, cutbacks of classes and decrease in teachers. This will no doubt impact the quality of public education especially students from marginalized, at-risk, low socio-economic communities.