Students out of class as 55,000 education workers go on strike in Ontario, Canada

By Barry Ellsworth

TRENTON, Canada (AA) - About 55,000 education workers defied government legislation making a strike illegal and walked off the job Friday in Ontario, Canada, leaving hundreds of thousands of students out of class.

Individual members of the Canadian Union of Public Employees include educational assistants, janitors, early childhood educators and administrative staff (but not teachers). Individuals face fines of up to $4,000 a day and the union $500,000 a day.

The provincial government enacted legislation Thursday in the hopes of preventing any strike action, using the so-called not-withstanding clause that overrides the Canadian Constitution and allows the government to impose a four-year contract. The law has only been used twice in Ontario's history.

But many see the move as trampling on worker's rights, as did Prime Minister Justin Trudeau who condemned the action in a phone call to Ontario Premier Doug Ford.

"If they take away our rights as a union, every other union is next," Aaron Guppy, a caretaker at a Toronto area school, told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation as he was picketed Friday outside Education Minister Stephen Lecce's office. "They are not going to stop with just us."

The union says it will stay continue to defy the legislation and if the government levies fines, it vowed to pay them for its members, which could cost CAN$220 million (US$162.8 million).

"If they want to say that strikes are illegal, than they need to understand that people still have the right to protest for their rights, to demand something better from our government," said Fred Hahn, president of CUPE Ontario, "a government that is sitting on a $2.1-billion surplus, a government refusing to actually invest in our schools."

Lecce said the government "will use every tool available" to end the strike, including enacting the fines.

At issue is wages - the government offered 2.5% increases to those making less than $43,000 a year and 1.5% for the others. The union wants a pay increase of 11.7%, saying its members are the lowest paid in schools at an average of $39,000 a year. As well, workers' wages increased only 8.5% in the past nine years while inflation rose 17.8% in Ontario over the same period, meaning members actually lost money.