The legislation requiring college teachers to return to the classroom was voted into law at Queen’s Park Sunday after a torturous five-week strike by members of the Ontario Public Services Employees Union (OPSEU). It was only the latest vicious confrontation between teachers and the education system to convulse Ontario in recent years. There seems no appetite or strategy to change the process. The conventional political and court-interpreted view of such strikes is that the students must face the loss of their time, money and learning in order to satisfy the right to strike.
“JEOPARDY NECESSARY TO ACT”
The minister, Deb Matthews, offered this view of the only acceptable role of government. “There is a very high bar. Collective bargaining is protected. The Supreme Court has ruled that you have to have a very, very good rationale, that the academic year [must be] in jeopardy. Had we gone before that final offer vote, this absolutely would have been challenged,” she told reporters at Queen’s Park.
