Public high school teachers and elementary teachers will get additional retroactive salary increases to compensate them for constrained wages under a law known as Bill 124.
When the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario and Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation reached new contract deals with the provincial government they left some issues to be decided by an arbitrator.
The teachers and government agreed to an additional 0.75 per cent in each of the first two years of their previous contract in order to compensate for lost wages under Bill 124, but the amount for the third year was left to arbitration.
The unions announced that the arbitrator has awarded an additional 2.75 per cent for the third year, amounts that are on top of the one-per-cent raises each year that were part of the previous contract under Bill 124.
Ontario’s top court is set to rule today on the constitutionality of a law that limited raises for more than one million workers in the broader public sector, including nurses and teachers.
The Progressive Conservatives enacted the law in 2019 to help the government eliminate a deficit.
Bill 124 capped salary increases for public sector workers to one per cent a year for three years.
Labour groups and unions representing hundreds of thousands of public sector employees challenged the law, and the Ontario Superior Court in late 2022 found it infringed collective bargaining rights, striking it down as unconstitutional.
Canadian Press