TORONTO — Ontario's education minister says an agreement allowing teachers who went on illegal strikes earlier this year to make pension contributions for that time won't apply to future illegal job actions.
Liz Sandals says public secondary school teachers in three boards who went on strike this spring are being exempted from a rule that prohibits pension payments during illegal strikes.
Sandals says the government didn't want to penalize the teachers since their union, the Ontario Secondary School Teachers' Federation, led them to believe the strike was legal, though it was later found to be illegal by the Ontario Labour Relations Board.
She says these three specific strikes are being treated as legal strikes under the pension contribution rules, which still dictate the government itself does not make the payments.
Sandals says this agreement with high school teachers in the Peel, Durham and Sudbury-area regions is "extraordinarily specific" and though she has a lot of sympathy for the individual members, the union "should have known better."
The education minister says even if other unions try to get similar exemptions in the future, it won't apply in any other circumstance.
"Quite frankly, unions present you with all sorts of creative interpretations of virtually every rule ever known to mankind and it's the government's job — or the board's job, as the case may be — to say no," Sandals said.
