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CUPE Ontario education workers ratify deal with province

The deal doesn't include new staffing level guarantees.

Laura Walton, the president of CUPE's Ontario School Boards Council of Unions, speaks Monday, Dec. 5, 2022.
Laura Walton, the president of CUPE's Ontario School Boards Council of Unions, speaks Monday, Dec. 5, 2022. Photo by Antonella Artuso /Toronto Sun

CUPE Ontario education workers have voted 73% in favour of a tentative deal with the provincial government and school boards.

The union said a record number of members voted, 41,559, or 76% of the membership.

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“For the first time in a decade, education workers have achieved a collective agreement that did not impose terms through legislation,” the bargaining committee said in a tweet Monday.

“Gains are not won at the bargaining table alone. Today we recommit to fighting alongside our allies and communities to demand more.”

The Ontario government and school boards are still negotiating with the province’s teacher unions.

The union represents roughly 55,000 Ontario education workers, who walked off the job for two days last month after the government passed — then later repealed — legislation that imposed a contract on them, banned them from striking, and used the notwithstanding clause to allow the override of certain charter rights.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 Nov. 20 that the union says comes with a $1-per-hour raise each year, or about 3.59 per cent annually, for the average worker.

Laura Walton, the president of CUPE’s Ontario School Boards Council of Unions, expressed reservations about the deal because it doesn’t include new staffing level guarantees.

“For the last week and a half, frontline education workers have been deciding if what’s in this tentative agreement is acceptable. This — workers having the freedom to negotiate and to withdraw our labour if necessary — is democracy in action,” Walton said in a statement.

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.”

— With files from The Canadian Press