Monday marked the start of strike votes for Ontario’s public elementary school teachers, with their union and others frustrated with the slow pace of more than a year of bargaining for a new contract.
The Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario is holding in-person strike votes for its 83,000 members for a month, with teachers in various regions voting on different days.
ETFO President Karen Brown says if members vote in favour of a strike, it doesn’t necessarily mean teachers will walk off the job.
She says a strong strike vote result will help ETFO communicate to the Ford government that they must get serious about bargaining because so far the union has been seeing an “unacceptably slow pace of bargaining.”
