The Doug Ford government wants to negotiate “long-standing” issues that should remain between school boards and union locals to hammer out, say the leaders of the province’s five big education unions in a statement released Tuesday morning — the day after all their contracts expired.
This “push to centralize decision making at the provincial level during this round of bargaining is not surprising … the government has attempted to push long-standing local bargaining items into central negotiations, despite our clear opposition,” the presidents wrote in the statement. “These include core working conditions such as: staffing timelines related to transfer, surplus, and redundancy; and local professional development funding.”