We are the educational assistants, office administrators, custodians, tradespeople, instructors, library technicians, early childhood educators, IT specialists, speech pathologists and many others – 55,000 in all.

Your Central Bargaining committee met with the Council of Trustee Associations (CTA) and the Crown on September 10, 11, 15, 16 and 17.

During the five days of negotiation some progress was made on minor points but many of our key issues remain unresolved. Job security, staffing levels, benefits (including LTD for those who do not have access or who are involved in a co- pay), pregnancy and parental leave SEB plans and sick leave are among the issues yet to be resolved. In addition, the employer created new impediments by asking us to identify offsets for any wage increases.

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TORONTO, ON – The Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), representing 55,000 education workers in Ontario’s schools, requested a no-board report on Wednesday, potentially putting its members across the province in a legal strike position the first week of school.

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Your Central Negotiations team met with the province and the Council of Trustees Association on August 19 and 20. We were only offered three more dates for bargaining before the start of school. While it was a step in the right direction, this is clearly not enough time to complete central bargaining.

As a result, we requested a no-board report from the conciliator. This request should have us in a legal strike position the first week of school. We have a leadership meeting scheduled on August 29 where we will be voting on a provincial job action strategy.

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WHAT’S THE ISSUE?

Our concern is that government cutbacks are compromising the ability of education workers to provide the learning environments students need and deserve. By freezing wages, eliminating job security provisions, weakening sick and paid leaves as well as parental and pregnancy leaves, the government is directly eroding the services that make learning possible.

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On Monday, July 27th, we filed for conciliation with the Ministry of Labour – you may have seen the news stories about this. Through this process, the Ministry appoints a “conciliator.” Because the management team only offered two days in July, and has committed to only an additional two days in August and two days in September, we felt we needed to move the process along by filing for conciliation. We know that you’re not prepared to go another year without a contract.

(Some of you have asked about the bargaining process and how a strike/lockout deadline gets established. We first must be in conciliation before we can take steps to set a strike deadline. We set a strike deadline by requesting what is called a “no-board report”. The Ministry sets the strike deadline for 17 days after it issues the no- board. We’ve asked locals to prepare for the possibility of job action in September).

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Last week we received our decision from the Ontario Labour Relations Board (OLRB) regarding what issues will be bargained centrally.

As you know, we sought a decision from the OLRB under Section 28 of the legislation governing our negotiations – Bill 122.

We held three hearing dates in June and vice chair Maurice Green issued a decision roughly a week following the last hearing date.

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