The union representing 55,000 Ontario education workers says a strike they are planning for Friday will continue until further notice. The Canadian Union of Public Employees has said the workers, such as early childhood educators, educational assistants and custodians, will walk off the job despite looming legislation that would make it illegal. Belleville’s Laura Walton, who is President of CUPE’s Ontario School Board Council of Unions, says the province is negotiating in bad faith.
“If this was really about, you know, preventing the strike and having those conversations, you don’t come in and tell somebody that, you know, we’re going to legislate you. You come in and you bring an offer and you work on this.”
Walton says they gave a new offer last night, but have yet to hear back.
“We’ve got a government that has overreached their authority by interfering with the Charter rights and human rights of workers.”
The Ontario government has introduced a bill that will likely be passed tomorrow to impose a contract on the education workers and ban them from striking upon threat of steep fines.
