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School Support Staff Vote To Step Up Job Action

Tuesday, 1 September 2015 at 05:35

55 000 educational support workers in Ontario are planning a work to rule campaign starting the first week of school.

OXFORD COUNTY - On Saturday 400 CUPE members met in Toronto to plan job action strategies. The union representing 55 000 educational workers in Ontario voted overwhelmingly in favour of escalating job actions during the first week of school.

CUPE Local 7575 represents Educational Assistants and Instructional Assistants, and president Heather Skolly says they do not enjoy doing this kind of thing.

"This is not something that we want to do but we have been one year without a collective agreement, three years without a raise. And we have other things that we want to see brought to the table. We want to talk centrally at the table about violence at the workplace."

Because of the nature of their work, EAs and Instructional Assistants face many dangers."Violence in the workplace is a huge issue for us," says Skolly. "So we do need to discuss it, and we do need to have some security there. We do have a lot of educational assistants that get injured on the job. Just because of the nature of the students with exceptionalities that we work with."

Although the campaign will start with work to rule action, if talks don't go well the union is prepared to move to rotating strikes. Skolly says this could put many of their students in a position where they may not be able to attend classes. "They may need Braille transcribing or they may need interpreting if they're hearing impaired. They may have behaviour issues where they have an EA that works with them. They may be physical or mental disabilities that we assist the students throughout the day just to make their day successful."

School support staff covers everything from custodians and IT workers to educational assistants and instructional assistants.

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