The Canadian Union of Public Employees says its Ontario education workers have voted to ratify a contract with the government.
Belleville’s Laura Walton, president of CUPE’s Ontario School Board Council of Unions, says about 73% of those who voted were in favour.
Walton says she had expected that number to be lower.
“But it just goes to show, like any other poll, right, the only one that counts is the actual day of the vote. And there was a lot of things flying around social media and flying around everywhere. But I think what this showed is we made the right choice as the bargaining committee to bring the deal back to the workers.”
Walton, who had said she didn’t like the deal because it didn’t come with staffing level guarantees, says about 76% of the union’s 55,000 education worker members voted during the ratification process.
“I was once told back in my early years that good negotiations mean that both parties walk away disappointed. And I think, you know, the reason that I keep going is because we haven’t ever achieved everything we hoped to.”
The ratification ends a whirlwind bargaining process that saw education workers walk off the job for two days after the government passed, then later repealed, legislation that imposed a contract on them, banned them from striking, and used the notwithstanding clause to allow the override of certain charter rights.
The two sides later returned to the table and brokered a tentative deal on November 20 that the union says comes with a one dollar-per-hour raise each year, or about 3.59% annually, for the average worker.
After the tentative deal was struck, Education Minister Stephen Lecce thanked education workers and said he was grateful the two sides “came together in the interest of our kids and put them first.”
(The Canadian Press)
