Parents hoping their children’s schools would have labour issues behind them by September may end up disappointed.
There are currently no talks scheduled between the Ontario Public School Boards Association (OPSBA) and either the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario or the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation.
“The government needs to step in and do something to get the negotiations moving along again,” Greg Weiler, the president of ETFO’s Waterloo chapter, said in an interview.
“Nothing has changed since school ended.”
Teachers’ contracts expired last summer.
Both unions have spent time negotiating with OPSBA since then, but negotiations broke off earlier this year in both cases.
Elementary teachers launched job action in May, opting not to perform certain administrative tasks.
Should the new school year begin with no deal, Weiler said Tuesday, teachers would essentially continue that action – which he says was chosen because it would be the least disruptive.
“If an escalation is required down the road, it becomes more and more difficult to minimize that impact,” he said.
Issues teachers have raised include attempts by the OPSBA to increase class sizes and exercise more control over “teacher decisions in the classroom,” Weiler said, while wages have not been discussed.
At the high school level, local OSSTF president Sherry Freund said teachers have reached a legal strike position and plan to stop taking part in extracurricular activities.
“We are still hopeful that a negotiated settlement can be reached with the government and OPSBA before summer’s end,” she said in an email.
The current round of contract negotiations marks the first to be done on a new two-track system.
In addition to the provincial talks, certain issues are left to be sorted out between unions and individual school board.
Local bargaining between the OSSTF and the Waterloo Region District School Board are expected to resume in September.
“To date, talks have been productive with agreement on a number of local issues,” WRDSB spokesperson Lynsey Meikle said in an email.
“There is continued work to be done and reason to believe that a local agreement can be achieved.”
As for Catholic schools, there are no talks scheduled between the OPSBA and the Ontario English Catholic Teachers’ Association.
Union officials have said that they plan to be in a legal strike position by mid-August, and expect some form of job action to begin at the start of the school year.
