Ontario teachers, who signed a new four-year contract last year, will have to start thinking about bargaining sooner rather than later. The flood of articles over the last few months about absenteeism point to a new line of battle in the coming contract negotiations.
Gains coming off education workers’ strike
In the last contract, we stayed pat on our sick leave guarantees and other conditions of work. The province was happy not to touch them and make sure that schools stayed open. Thus, they were willing to give in to just about anything asked by the teachers in the province. We owe this to the OSBCU education workers in CUPE who went out on an illegal strike versus Doug Ford’s Bill 28 and brought the province to the verge of a general strike in November 2022. Represented by CUPE’s OSBCU and led by president Laura Walton, education workers set the stage for this confrontation months ago. Their systematic approach to engaging, organizing, and mobilizing their members produced a record-breaking strike mandate vote in early October: 96.5 percent in favour with an 83 percent turnout.
Outside the union, Justice for Workers (J4W) launched an impressive solidarity campaign, including numerous calls to “paint the province purple,” which created opportunities for trade unionists and non-union workers alike to build support for education workers in their workplaces and communities. In the same spirit, the Ontario Parent Action Network (OPAN) began to organize supportive parents and pushed back on Education Minister Stephen Lecce’s attempts to pit students and their families against education workers. These initiatives, coupled with the union’s success in bargaining for the public good, produced a wave of support for education workers that swept the province. That confrontation forced the province to back down and get deals done as quietly as possible.
The Ford government with its post-pandemic lockdown promises of “stability for students and families” was determined to avoid any further labour disruptions in school. Their bargaining reflected this as well. After the confrontation with CUPE education workers, the Ontario government gave way more than they wanted to in those contracts to ETFO (Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario) and Ontario English Catholic Teachers’ Association (OECTA) than they would if it weren’t so humiliated by the CUPE contract fight.
Staffing level and class sizes are at the root of absenteeism
While teachers and other education workers were happy to maintain the sick leave from previous contracts and get a decent pay bump, nothing was done about class sizes and staffing levels. These conditions of work are key to understanding the staffing crisis facing Ontario schools. Understaffing is leading to an exodus from the profession and this increases burnout amongst the remaining staff. If this isn’t addressed education workers will continue to use sick leave to cope.
As we look towards 2026, we can see the political terrain being set by many school boards. All the biggest media outlets had articles about “pervasive absenteeism” costing school boards millions. This may not have been a fight that the province wanted to have, but school boards are going to force their hand. The HR Reporter summarized a lot of this reporting in December:
“School boards in Toronto are taking strict measures to address rising absenteeism costs, including hiring private investigators to uncover abuse of sick leave. These efforts have led to disciplinary actions and terminations, raising concerns among education unions…A memo from the Toronto Elementary Catholic Teachers union warned its members to only use sick days as intended, stating, ‘The board has hired private investigators to observe members, attempting to identify what they deem as misuse of sick days. This has led to disciplinary actions, up to and including termination. Protect yourself by adhering to the (collective agreement) guidelines.’”
Education unions have pushed back, expressing concern over the intimidation and invasion of privacy. Deborah Karam, president of Toronto Elementary Catholic Teachers, described the use of private investigators as “heavy-handed and disturbing,” according to the Toronto Star. “If the (board) truly cared about the quality of student education and the welfare of school staff, it would focus on understanding and addressing why teachers are reporting higher levels of stress and burnout than ever.” The TDSB report on absenteeism points to some reasons for absenteeism and burnout amongst its employees.
As reported by CTV News: “the report identified a number of internal and external factors, including, but not limited to, socio-economic factors, workplace culture and employee experience, insufficient disability and WSIB resources and “absenteeism acceptance,” defined as a teacher’s ‘tendency to accept absenteeism, recognizing an effective response to absenteeism without attempting to change it…’The report noted that there are higher rates of educator absenteeism in areas of the city with higher populations of low-income families, racialized students and students with special education needs.”
This report suggests that absenteeism might be one way staff are coping with the increased demands and challenges at schools which have the highest challenges outside the classroom (poverty, racism, ableism) and the ways in which those wider societal problems increase challenges for staff inside the classroom. Education workers don’t set the rents, wages or working hours for parents, but they surely deal with the affects of higher living costs and lower wages in the school.
Attack on education workers’ paid sick days needs unified response
Regardless of the reasons for absenteeism, it is clear that school boards are going to try to make this an issue in the next round of bargaining. That means challenges to sick leave. Drawing the lessons from 2022 are important. CUPE education workers were the first to take on the government and their strength and resilience pushed every labour union forward. They did it with open, transparent bargaining and member engagement. Members felt like they were involved and invested in the outcome of the contract and because they were willing to stand up, walk out and defend their labour rights the entire labour movement was moved and teachers across the province got a better contract. As teachers, we can’t expect arbitration without agitation to get the goods. Arbitration has historically not yielded great results for workers (consider the track record for personal support workers and nurses in Ontario until very recently) and the only reason it was favourable this time was because of the militant actions of CUPE members changing the terrain for other education unions.
This time, education unions should have a coordinated approach and active approach that involves their members. It is great that some unions like the ETFO are taking a more public approach, but we can’t farm out this task to advertising agencies. This is a government that took away two paid sick days from workers as soon as they came into office and cut the three pandemic sick days in 2022. Education workers need to be part of the fight to raise the floor so all workers have paid sick days, while also defending the paid sick days we have. Beyond defending our collective agreement and fighting for all worker’s access to paid sick days, we also need to organize to improve class size and staffing levels which are at the root of the absentee crisis.
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