Schools become trashed while Catholic Board is on strike

By John Perry-Goodson

The Greater Essex Catholic District School Board is on strike, impacting both Unifor members and students.

The strike started Oct. 17, and there have been no negotiations with WECDSB. If the school board is unwilling to participate in free bargaining, the union asks to move to binding arbitration to allow members to return to work and allow schools and students to return to their routines. Custodians, secretaries, maintenance workers and other support staff are on strike.

Protestors are now being limited after a recent court injunction. Cars containing school staff cannot be held up for more than five minutes and school buses, parents, students and emergency vehicles cannot be delayed at all. According to the board, support staff pickets caused up to five-hour delays as students and teachers were held up in long lines of cars.

“Our picketing rights have been limited. A judge has now told us how long we can picket and who we can picket,” said Crystal Janisse, a custodian who works for the school board at the picket line.

Students are facing dirty hallways and classrooms since custodians have been on strike. Since no custodians are working, schools have become unsanitary as students are purposely trashing the school.

“I thought this wasn’t going to affect us at first and when the janitors left we could take care of it,” said Musa Alnas, a student at Catholic Central High School.

“But then it started getting worse and worse and worse to the point where we feel like our school is not even a school anymore.”

Without custodians, any mess such as spills or washroom incidents go unattended and make the schools unsafe for attendees.

“The teachers can’t even clean it up and the principal says they have to clean everything,” said Mesfen Teferi, a student from Catholic Central High School. “They have to kick us out of the school early.”

Although the strike started in mid-October, it shows no sign of stopping anytime soon.