Ontario’s education minister on Monday offered educational assistants, school library workers, janitors and other school staff a pay raise of no more than two percent a year, in a proposal the union that represents them described as “discouraging.” .
Ford’s government called its proposal “a fair deal in recognition of the valuable work” those workers provide, but it was significantly less than what the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) was seeking earlier this month: an increase of $ 3.25 per hour for workers earning an average of $39,000 a year.
The government offer, by comparison, would be about 55 cents an hour, or $800 a year, CUPE said. It comes in the wake of three years of wage suppression across much of the public sector and skyrocketing inflation this year that has further sapped purchasing power.
Workers making more than $40,000 a year were offered a 1.25 percent raise.
“This is the government that talks about better jobs and higher wages,” said Laura Walton, an educational assistant from Belleville and president of the CUPE Council of Ontario School Boards Unions, which is currently negotiating a new collective bargaining agreement for about 55,000 non-teaching schools. staff.
“I’m not sure if $800 in the face of rising inflation can be considered a bigger paycheck,” she said. “And in fact, given inflation as it is, this is actually a pay cut for these education workers.”
The terms are also unlikely to help with a shortage of teachers and other education workers in the province, Walton said.
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“Fifty-five cents an hour is not going to get people into these jobs,” he said, noting that negotiators at the Education Ministry acknowledged concerns about how many people have signed up for programs that would get them into these jobs.
This agreement precedes the one that the re-elected Progressive Conservatives must reach with the four main teachers unions before the return to school of the two million primary and secondary students in the province in early September.
Negotiations three years ago saw months of rotating strikes and other labor action by the four main teachers’ unions in the province, but were quickly ended after the arrival of COVID-19.
Ontario Education Minister @Sflecce is offering a 2% annual wage increase for the lowest-paid education workers in an extended four-year proposal. #onted #onpoli
Education Minister Stephen Lecce said in his statement that the four-year terms of this agreement (compared to a typical three-year agreement) would be extended by regulation to all those unions to provide stability for parents and students.
Given that entry-level positions are far apart in pay (education workers are seeking a raise of about 11.7 percent a year) and a host of other issues, CUPE’s Walton argued for worker poverty in education. education across the province and said they were struggling to maintain service levels for students dealing with more than two years of disruption from the pandemic.
“Education workers in this province are fighting to stay out of poverty while fighting to provide the services we know students, families and communities need,” he said. “The proposal of just $800 on average per year in the face of skyrocketing inflation will not pay rent, put food on the table, or address the staffing issues that are rampant in our schools.”
Those workers were subject to the Ford administration’s Bill 124, which in 2019 capped pay increases for some public sector workers at 1 percent a year for three years, and before that to several years of government-imposed pay freezes. earlier liberal.
These factors have led to salary increases equivalent to 8.8 percent between 2012 and 2021, while inflation rose 19.5 percent in that time, CUPE said.
Lecce argued that applying the union’s proposed percentage increases to the pay rates of the highest-paid teachers would create a hypothetical $21.8 billion cost to taxpayers, equivalent to the education budgets of British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan combined.
“We need CUPE to present an offer that is fair and sustainable,” he said. “We are committed to fair treatment, but it cannot compromise the fiscal sustainability of the publicly funded education system.”
Morgan Sharp / Local Journalism Initiative / National Observer Canada