Ontario has reached a tentative deal with public elementary teachers, averting a possible strike.
Education Minister Stephen Lecce confirmed the deal in a social media post on Tuesday morning.
“This agreement brings us one step closer to ensuring there will be no province-wide job actions or strikes in all English-language public schools for the next three years,” he said.
The new tentative central agreement will impact about 80,000 teacher and occasional teachers across the province.
Karen Brown, president of ETFO, said the union that after 14 months of bargaining she is “pleased” to bring the new agreement to members later this week.
"This has been the longest round of central bargaining in ETFO’s history, but we persisted. We remained focused on getting government cuts off the table and on addressing members’ working conditions, which are students’ learning conditions."
A ratification vote will be scheduled shortly.
The minister said that some issues will be going to binding arbitration, although it is unclear what those outstanding issues are.
Last month the province agreed to give some elementary education workers retroactive salary increases to compensate for wage caps under Bill 124.
Education workers represented by ETFO ratified their contracts in October.
Ontario secondary teachers remain in arbitration with the province after agreeing to the process in September.
Ontario’s Catholic and French-language teachers are still in negotiations with the Doug Ford government.
This is a breaking news story. More to come.