The Ontario government will revoke Bill 28, which imposed an employment contract on workers in the education sector, union representatives confirmed on Monday afternoon. In the morning, Prime Minister Doug Ford said he was ready to repeal the bill that was accompanied by the provision in derogation if the approximately 55,000 workers of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) ended the strike.
On Friday, hundreds of CUPE members working as administrative assistants or custodians, among other things, began a strike that the government deemed illegal under the bill passed the day before. The union says its workers will return to work tomorrow. The bill threatened union members with fines of $ 4,000 for each day of strike. The union, for its part, faced a $ 500,000 fine.
On Thursday evening, the government approached the Ontario Labor Relations Board to declare the strike illegal, which would pave the way for members fines. Met on Monday, one of CUPE’s lawyers, Steven Barrett, clarified that the commission’s decision was now useless due to the government’s withdrawal.
The lawyer had joined the union at a downtown Toronto hotel. The SCPF was surrounded by trade union representatives from the public and private sectors. “The Prime Minister will introduce a bill that will repeal Bill 28,” said Laura Walton, president of the Ontario School Board Council of Unions, the CUPE subsidiary representing workers covered by Bill 28.
“The past two and a half years have been difficult for the children,” Ontario Premier, along with his Education Minister, Stefano Lecce, said in the morning. “I have always respected the rights of workers,” said the prime minister. In documents submitted to the Commission, CUPE lawyers state that Doug Ford and Stephen Lecce “had no real intention of bargaining in good faith with the union.”
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