Timmins teachers walked the picket line as local union members took part in a one-day full withdrawal of services.
This afternoon, Ontario Secondary School Teachers' Federation (OSSTF) executive officer Dave Warda was in South Porcupine meeting with members outside Roland Michener Secondary School. It was one stop of several in the district, having visited New Liskeard, Englehart and Kirkland Lake as well.
“The members are really frustrated with the government and...this whole reason we’re having the strike is to put pressure on the government to come back to the table and to remove some conditions that they’ve placed on bargaining so that we can actually negotiate a deal,” he said.
The issues he said haven't changed are class sizes getting bigger, taking money out of education, and eLearning.
Locally, today's strike affected OSSTF members at District School Board Ontario North East (DSB1) and Conseil scolaire de district catholique des Grandes Rivieres. All English public schools and French Catholic schools were closed to students.
At DSB1, the OSSTF represents high school teachers, attendance counsellors, child and youth workers, early childhood educators, educational assistants, social workers and Indigenous student advisors.
Since Nov. 26, members have not been doing standardized testing or prep, completing Ministry of Education Data Reports, participating in school board professional activities, taking part in unpaid staff meetings outside the regular school day, commenting on report cards, or performing work of another bargaining unit.
This is the second time Timmins teachers have been on the picket line, as OSSTF members took part in a province-wide one day strike in December. Since then, the union has staged weekly strikes at certain school boards.
As the union waits to go back to the bargaining table, Warda said the next step is to empower parents to put pressure on school boards.
"We have a system that has been really successful, we graduate almost 90 per cent of the kids that come to the high school. We’ve had a lot of success and the cuts that are coming are going to impact that success. We need school boards and we need the trustees and we need the system that we’ve built over the last 20 years, we need them to come up and protect it,” he said.
All four of Ontario's teachers' unions are now engaged in job action.
The Ontario English Catholic Teachers' Association (OECTA) is staging a province-wide, one-day full withdrawal of services Tuesday, Jan. 21.
For the strike, Northeastern Catholic District School Board (NCDSB) elementary and high schools will be closed to students.
OECTA's job action started Jan. 13. Its members are not completing report cards, participating in EQAO-related activities, and attending or taking part in Ministry of Education initiatives.
The Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario (ETFO) also upped its job action this week.
Public elementary teachers are no longer supervising extracurricular activities unless scheduled during the regular school day, and not taking part in field trips. Members are also not arriving at work earlier than 30 minutes before the start of the instructional day are leaving within 15 minutes of the end of classes. They are not planning or participating in assemblies, unless it's to provide supervision to students.
If the ETFO and government don't reach a deal by Jan. 17, its members will start rotating strikes starting Jan. 20.
French-language teachers at Association des enseignantes et enseignants franco-ontariens (AEFO) are set to start the first phase of its administrative job action Thursday.
