Ontario Ministry of Education yesterday announced that the central agreement with the Education Workers’ Alliance of Ontario (EWAO), has been ratified by school boards and the unions, and agreed to by the Government of Ontario.
EWAO represents 3,975 education workers across the province, including education assistants, early childhood educators, professional services, custodial and maintenance staff.
However, the provincial government is still at loggerheads with the larger unions such as Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario (ETFO) with 83,000 members; Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation (OSSTF/FEESO) with 60,000 members and Ontario English Catholic Teachers’ Association (OECTA) with 45,000 members.
Collective agreements between school boards and EWAO include both central and local terms. The central terms are now resolved. In order to complete the collective bargaining process, local terms need to be reached between each school board and its EWAO bargaining units, the ministry said.
The three-year collective agreements will be effective September 1, 2019, through August 31, 2022.
Compensation and benefits: Under the agreement, EWAO education workers will receive a one per cent wage increase and one per cent benefits funding increase per year for three years.
Local Priorities Fund: Reinstatement of the fund that provides system priorities investments of $6.34 million annually for three years — of which, $5.76 million is for the special education staff in each year. This delivers on the government’s promise to protect front-line services by restoring about 100 full-time equivalent EWAO positions, including education assistants, child and youth workers/counsellors, professional student services personnel, office, clerical and technical, custodial and maintenance education workers.
Reducing absenteeism and reduce sick leave usage: The agreement includes a requirement stating that a medical certificate may be requested by the school board, and shall be provided by the employee, for access to short-term disability leave.
Measures also give school boards the ability to seek additional medical information relating to sick leave or short-term disability leave usage.
Continued support for Community Use of Schools: School boards will continue to receive approximately $18,405 per year for three years to keep schools open outside of class hours for community use.
Stephen Lecce, Minister of Education, congratulated EWAO and the Council of Trustees’ Associations (CTA) for the ratification of the 2019-22 central agreement and expressed his “gratitude to them for being reasonable at the negotiating table — a prerequisite to any deal”.
“Like our deal with the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), our primary objective was to keep students in class and provide predictability and certainty to parents, students and educators alike.
“We have now delivered two ratified deals to date and will continue to work on securing deals with our remaining education labour partners to ensure students remain in class,” Lecce said.
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