Education Minister Paul Calandra said Thursday that students will be back in the classroom next month, despite ongoing negotiations between the Ford government and Ontario secondary school teachers.
Current education contracts are set to expire at the end of the month, but negotiations for a new deal have stalled before they even really started, with the parties not agreeing on which issues should be bargained centrally, and which should be local.
Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation president Martha Hradowy says the government is trying to further centralize talks, moving issues such as transfer, layoff and recall language away from local tables.
The central-local split issue has been referred to the Ontario Labour Relations Board, effectively stalling bargaining.
Hradowy says talks should be continuing on the issues both sides agree are central, such as class sizes and workloads.
But Calandra says it is essential to have the certainty of what issues will be negotiated centrally before approaching bargaining as a whole.
