Ontario teachers’ job action is by no means stopping, with elementary school teachers now jumping on the bandwagon.
Secondary school teachers moved to start a selective strike after negotiations broke off in early November. Now elementary schools may soon join in on the legal job action though nothing will be stirred up in elementary schools until later this month.
The Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario (ETFO) is not yet seeing any job action from Waterloo Region’s elementary schools, with teachers resuming their regular activities and unable to pursue any legal job action until December 17, according to Greg Weiler, president of the union local.
“Nothing has changed at this point, teachers are still making individual decisions on things that they can control like voluntary activities. We had conciliation on November 23 and that kind of starts the clock ticking as to when something can happen,” he said.
A meeting with the region’s school board will take place on December 10 to go over what teachers’ activities may look like when the time for a strike is at hand.
Weiler said other locals are already implementing job action but Waterloo Region has not yet finished going through the process to make any strike action possible.
When the time comes, his prediction is that action here will look similar to what is happening in other jurisdictions such as Ottawa, which has already commenced some forms of strike action. It’s possible that field trips will be cancelled and no meetings will be held outside of regular school hours.
“Basically a restriction to focusing on academics, teaching students and student safety,” Weiler explained.
Decisions on that will have to wait until after December 17. Waterloo Region District School Board spokesperson Abigail Dancey confirmed the date of the possible strike action.
“Elementary school teachers are taking some action; they are following some advice, some suggestions by ETFO currently. It’s happening across schools and to different degrees across schools,” she said of the situation in the province, adding that the board’s website is updated regularly so that parents and the rest of the public can keep track of any developments.
Weiler predicted that much can change between now and then. Anything is possible with the government holding the power to start and stop negotiations as well as impose a contract, adding it’s difficult to predict the government’s next steps.
Elementary teachers’ unions are moving on the matter in order to push matters along and encourage the resurrection of talks with the government, he explained, noting that there is a misconception that teachers are escalating things with the strike. He claims this is not the truth and says the unions only want talks to resume.
“At the provincial level the government invited us back to talks on November 11 and then they broke those off and nothing has happened since then. That’s really what we would like to see continuing to happen is talks at that level so we can resolve some of the problems … that would be what everybody wants to happen. No one takes any job action lightly.”
