London-area Catholic schools will close Monday if deal not reached

Schools in the London District Catholic board will be closed if a deal between the province and the union representing education workers isn’t reached by early Monday, the board says.

CUPE, the union that represents 55,000 Ontario education workers, has filed a five-day strike notice, saying bargaining talks with the province have broken down once more. Members are set to walk out Monday.

The London District Catholic board said if deal has not been reached by early Monday, schools will be closed and students would learn online.

“As a precaution, students should bring home personal belongings, eyeglasses, medication, textbooks, musical instruments” on Thursday, the board said in a release Wednesday. Schools are closed Friday because its professional activities day for teachers.

If the board’s schools close Monday, child-care centers would also be closed, and before and after school programs would be canceled along with bookings by community groups.

About 1,300 of the board’s 3,500 employees are represented by CUPE, including educational assistants, school office staff, custodians and IT support staff.

“We cannot safely operate schools with so many employees absent,” the board said.

The Thames Valley District school board has not released any information in response to CUPE’s announcement of a potential strike.

CUPE said its members are poised to strike Monday — two weeks after their last walkout ended — because they want certain staffing levels to be guaranteed, even though they’ve reached an agreement with the government on wages.

The union announced Wednesday that it filed a five-day strike notice, saying that after two full days of bargaining, talks with the province have broken down once more.

Both sides have agreed to a $1-per-hour raise each year, or about 3.59 per cent annually, CUPE said, and not just for the lowest-paid workers. Previous offers from the government included higher raises for workers earning less than approximately $40,000, but CUPE was unhappy with two-tiered increases.

Laura Walton, the president of CUPE’s Ontario School Board Council of Unions, said the agreement on wages was “a win,” though still “not enough.”

“This was never just about wages,” Walton said at a press conference. “A wage increase doesn’t help if you’re going to lose your job. A wage increase isn’t going to help when you have school boards that are finding ways to get rid of people. A wage increase isn’t going to help if your hours get cut.”

CUPE said it is still looking for guarantees of higher staffing levels for educational assistants, librarians, custodians and secretaries, and an early childhood educator in every kindergarten classroom and not just classes that have more than 16 students.

Walton said those staffing requests would cost $100 million.

Education Minister Stephen Lecce said the wage agreement would be $335 million over four years and the province has not asked for any concessions in return.

The government put forward multiple improved offers and repealed previous legislation that imposed a contract on the workers, Lecce said.

“It’s an unfair strike on so many children they’re contemplating, especially given that the government significantly increased wages for lowest-paid workers and revoked the bill,” Lecce said. “We did everything we said we would.”

CUPE’s education workers walked off the job for two days earlier this month in response to the government enacting a law that imposed contracts on them, banned them from striking, and used the notwithstanding clause to allow the override of certain charter rights.

Hundreds of schools were closed to in-person learning for two days as a result of the walkout.

Premier Doug Ford then offered last week to withdraw the legislation if CUPE members returned to work, which they did, and bargaining resumed.

In 2019, CUPE and the government reached a last-minute deal the day before workers had been set to go on a full strike.

There are now five days to reach a deal or CUPE will strike, the union said.

“There’s always going to be pressure tactics when you’re negotiating,” Walton said. “Obviously, there’s not enough right now, or else it would be done. This could have been settled last night, we could have been standing in this room today announcing that there was a deal we’re going to be taking to our members.”