Ontario teachers awarded 2.75 per cent retroactive pay to compensate for wage restraint law

Ontario public high school and elementary teachers will get additional retroactive salary increases to compensate them for constrained wages under a law known as Bill 124.

When the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario (ETFO) and Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation (OSSTF) reached new contract deals with the provincial government they left some issues to be decided by an arbitrator.

The teachers and government agreed to an additional 0.75 per cent in each of the first two years of their previous contract in order to compensate for lost wages under Bill 124, but the amount for the third year was left to arbitration.

The unions announced Friday that the arbitrator has awarded an additional 2.75 per cent for the third year, amounts that are on top of the one per cent raises each year that were part of the previous contract under Bill 124. In total teachers will receive a 7.25 per cent increase for the 2019-2022 contract term.

Bill 124 capped salary increases for public sector workers to one per cent a year for three years.

“The Ford Conservative government never should have illegally interfered in collective bargaining and suppressed the wages of Ontario’s lowest-paid education workers – or any public sector workers at all,” said Rod McGee, custodian and president of CUPE’s Ontario School Boards Council of Unions (OSBBU).

“This remedy – that we’re only getting because we fought back against Ford’s Bill 124 – is the least that’s owed to educational assistants, caretakers, school secretaries, early childhood educators, and the thousands of other frontline education workers who are the backbone of our kids’ public schools.”

“This decision reinforces what we have known all along; our members have been underpaid and undervalued for years while the Progressive Conservatives underfunded public education and shortchanged Ontario’s students,” said OSSTF/FEESO President Karen Littlewood in a joint statement issued Friday afternoon.

“This arbitration award is a clear acknowledgment of the egregious, unlawful suppression of wages that deliberately undermined our members’ rights and livelihoods,” added ETFO President Karen Brown. “The Ford government’s unconstitutional attack on public sector workers must never be repeated.”

The government has 60 days to provide school boards with funds to cover the remedy owed to eligible OSSTF/FEESO and ETFO members. School boards must issue payments to all eligible members no later than 120 days.

An Ontario court has declared Bill 124 unconstitutional, ruling that it infringes on the workers’ rights to freedom of association and collective bargaining.

The government appealed and the Appeal Court is set to issue a ruling on Monday.