While the province has reached tentative deals with some of its teachers' unions, school support staff workers in Ontario are in a legal strike position.
The province's 55,000 support staff, members of CUPE, have been without a contract for a year. They are in a legal strike position on Sept. 8.
Moira Bell, with Local 4186, says her members include custodians, maintenance workers, educational assistants, library techs and office secretaries, in both the Catholic and public boards.
“Basically anyone in the school that’s not a principal or a teacher is a CUPE member,” she says.
CUPE says so far they've only been able to meet with the province three times.
“We want dates to bargain,” Bell says. “We want the opportunity to bargain a fair contract. We need dates to do that.”
Among the issues, the union says members haven't received a raise since 2011.
Paul Azotini's daughter Lily is set to start Junior Kindergarten in a couple of weeks.
Azotini says the labour situation is frustrating and his daughter just wants to go to school.
“It’s heartbreaking. She’s been talking about it all year long,” she says.
The good news is that CUPE's central bargaining unit will be meeting with the province this weekend, hoping to hammer out a deal that would avert any work stoppage in the first week of school.
The province also still needs agreements with elementary and the Francophone teachers.
The province's English Catholic Teachers Association and school boards reached a tentative deal Tuesday following last week's tentative agreement with high school teachers.
The Elementary Teachers' Federation is scheduled to return to bargaining on September 1st, and has threatened to ramp up a work-to-rule campaign that started last spring if there's no deal when classes begin a week later.
- With files from The Canadian Press
