TORONTO — The Ontario government has made good on a threat to legislate striking school employees back to work in an effort to resume classes for thousands of students in Toronto and Windsor.
Labour Minister Chris Stockwell tabled legislation Wednesday that gives the two school boards and their respective unions seven days to reach a settlement before being forced into binding arbitration.
Both boards will have 48 hours from the date the bill becomes law — likely to occur late next week at the earliest, thanks to opposition from the NDP — to resume normal operations, Stockwell said. As a result, students likely won’t return to classes until the week of May 7.
About 13,000 custodians, secretaries and teaching assistants at 565 public high schools and elementary schools under the Toronto District School Board are now in their fourth week of astrike.
About 300,000 students have been out of class since Monday when the board closed the schools because it believed them too filthy to be safe. The Windsor-Essex Catholic District School Board reopened its elementary schools last week after the strike by custodians closed schools for nearly four weeks.
The board’s 9,000 high school students are still attending only the equivalent of a half-day of classes. John Weatherup, president of local 4400 of the Canadian Union of Public Employees representing the Toronto workers, responded angrily to the government’s legislation. “The ill will that will be caused by this may never be corrected,” Weatherup told a news conference. “I think this type of draconian legislation doesn’t help anyone.”
