School strike felt by students

By Nate Hinckley

For more than two weeks, 370 workers from the Windsor-Essex Catholic District School Board have been picketing outside the board’s schools with no end in sight.

The WECDSB’s facilities have stayed open throughout the duration of the strike.

While picketers have been allowing students and parents to go through, they are delaying teachers at the entrances of most schools.

Stephen Fields, the board’s communications coordinator said the strike has been causing disruptions with students and their class time.

“It is interfering with the instructional time that they are entitled to under the Education Act,” said Fields. “By allowing students into schools and delaying teachers, picketers are cutting into valuable class time.”

Fields said Villanova High School, St. Joseph’s Catholic High School and St. Anne Catholic High School have seen the longest delays since the start of the strike.

Unifor Local 2458 recently sent a counter-offer to the WECDSB for negotiations.

They want to go back to the bargaining table, but the board does not.

The workers have not had an official collective agreement since it expired on Aug. 31, 2012. Their wages and contract conditions have also been frozen since September 2012. Their contract was then placed under Bill 115, also known as the Putting Students First Act which prevented employees from taking strike action.

That bill was ruled unconstitutional in Ontario courts last April.

“The board appears to be doubling down on conditions that have already been ruled unconstitutional,” said Unifor in their Oct. 31 statement. “It is well past the time to return to the bargaining table to get this settled.”

“We are prepared to return to the table as soon as Unifor provides a meaningful counterproposal to the offer we tabled Oct. 7,” said Fields

Fields said he is not confident there is an end in sight for the strike.