Teachers in high schools across Ontario are considering walking off the job this spring in order to motivate pay increases and improved working conditions.
Catholic and elementary schools are not part of the potential strike action at this point.
The Ottawa Carleton District School Board oversees 26 high schools in the area.
It is one of seven unionized school boards that could be affected by a “full withdrawal of services” by teachers if contract negotiations aren’t successfully advanced.
Both the school board and teacher’s union say the negotiations are about the students.
“Throughout this process, our goal is to sustain the focus on student learning in our classrooms,” says Jennifer Adams, the board’s director of education.
In contrast, Paul Elliott, president of the Ontario Secondary School Teacher’s Federation, suggests governments and school boards “can’t get their heads around the fact that our working conditions are also the learning conditions of our students.”
Speaking at a televised annual union meeting held in Toronto on March 14, Elliott said the earliest dates for bargaining talks are scheduled to occur on April 8 for support staff and a bit later for teachers.
Though not speaking directly about what a potential strike would look like in Ottawa, the board says it is committed to making progress in negotiations with teachers, according to a statement issued by Adams.
She says the bargaining process is still in the very early stages and that the board will be informing students, parents and staff of any developments.
Last fall, union members voted in favour of striking to get what they want.
The result of the vote, according to Elliott, “served as a stark indication of the level of frustration at the local level.”
He says teachers will stand together until governments and school boards “come to the table with something more than frozen salaries and diminished working conditions.”
According to board spokeswoman Sharlene Hunter, the board has agreed in principle not to publically disclose the climate of the negotiations until board members sit down with union officials.
She says the board’s obligation is to students and to bargain in good faith.
Reduced striking rights and frozen salaries for teachers were enacted under former premier Dalton McGuinty. But before the provincial election last year, the current government passed a bill less restrictive of collective bargaining for teachers, called the School Boards Collective Bargaining Act, 2014.