Ontario’s public high school teachers will need to “fight tooth and nail” in this round of bargaining with the provincial government, says the president of their union.
Speaking to local leaders at their summer meeting in Toronto, Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation president Karen Littlewood said “I know the absolute last thing that anyone wants to hear right now is about how our fight continues, about all the efforts that are still needed.”
Littlewood went on to say that “yes, we are going to have to fight tooth and nail to protect our rights as workers — because we all deserve a good job with fair wages and decent benefits.” The union, which represents 63,000 teachers and professionals in schools, will also be pushing for “smaller class sizes and less online learning, for improved health and safety standards, and proper and equitable access to supports and services from the whole education team.”
She said current signals from the provincial government about privatizing the health-care system mirror what is going on in education — in particular the millions the government has spent on private tutoring to help students catch up from pandemic learning loss, including a recentWhile calling the ongoing tutoring funding “chilling,” she said she doesn’t want to “scare anyone. I come with a very hopeful energy ... knowing that we can make a difference.
She said the government talks about stability but the best way to ensure that is through proper funding, fully staffed schools as well as wage increases that reflect cost-of-living.All education union contracts expire at the end of August, and
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