Ontario teachers’ right to strike violated again
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The Ontario Liberal government, re-elected with the thinly veiled sup port of teacher-union bureaucrats in June 2014, once again violated sec ondary school teachers’ right to strike with back to work legislation in late May 2015. The Conservative Official Opposition voted for the strikebreak ing law; the labour-based New Democratic Party voted against it.
The main issues giving rise to job action at three local school boards, Dur ham, Peel and Sudbury, are the threat of an increase in class size, the loss of teacher in-school preparation time, and four more years of an ongoing In a vain attempt to economize on strike pay, leaders of the Ontario Sec ondary School Teachers’ Federation decided to initiate strike action at only three of Ontario’s 31 public secular English-language school districts. But the Ontario Labour Relations Board, on a complaint from Durham, ruled the three strikes illegal because they appeared to address monetary issues that are designated for negotiation at the provincial level. So the OLRB im posed a two-week moratorium on the local strikes. Then the provincial government came down with a legislative sledgehammer, banning strike action for the duration of the school year, through the end of June.
The Liberal government’s strong-arm tactic inflamed already frustrated educators and support staff. They watched for months as local talks were stymied by intransigent provincial officials demanding severe worker con cessions. This situation makes a province-wide strike in early September by OSSTF, as well as by elementary, French, and Catholic teachers, likely— unless Liberal Premier Kathleen Wynne and her Education Minister Liz Sandals decide to make it illegal, as did the previous Liberal government Ultimately, education workers will have to decide: defy the bosses’ law and defeat the austerity agenda, or submit to the death of public education by a thousand cuts. The formation now of a common front of all workers united against austerity would make the choice to defy the bosses much Socialism wage freeze. under Premier Dalton McGuinty in 2013.
easier, and much more likely to succeed. — BARRY WEISLEDER