Ontario agrees to terms with high school teachers in ratifying new contract

The Ontario Secondary School Teachers' Federation arrived at the collective agreement with the province and school boards on April 20, according to CTV News.

The deal was part of a six-month negotiation, with rounds of contentious bargaining along the way.

The teachers held rotating strikes for a number of weeks, but decided to put them on hold due to the coronavirus.

Within the past few months, Ontario had ratified contracts with three other teachers' unions: the Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario, the Ontario English Catholic Teachers' Association and the Association des enseignantes et des enseignants franco-ontariens.

OSSTF had stated before that it was fighting against the Progressive Conservative government's move to increase class sizes and mandatory online learning—proposals the Tories largely reversed several months ago.

Education Minister Stephen Lecce maintained that the negotations were about compensationn, with the government offering teachers a one percent salary increase while the teachers' asking for somewhere around two percent.