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Ontario’s primary school teachers’ union announced that they will walk off the job tomorrow, Friday January 12th. Parents are left to scramble and find alternative arrangements to look after their children. Some of us have the luxury to work from home, or better yet we are stay at home moms and this event won’t affect us, but for the rest of us this can be a potential disaster.
Dalton McGuinty, Ontario’s Liberal Premier, attended a press conference late yesterday afternoon and called the announced strike as illegal and unlawful under the new contract that was imposed on the teachers late last year. Teachers who walk off the job in planned illegal strikes face fines of up to $2,000 each, under Ontario law.
This begs the question as to who is the victim in this situation. The government has to cut costs and look good for the next elections, the teachers would like to have the right to protest and bring the education system to a halt when they have a problem with the government, which is normally in relation to salary and benefits freezes. Ultimately our children will have to bear the brunt of this battle because both the government and the teachers are supposed to be serving them and they are not being served. Should the children and their parents have the right to protest? We saw what happened to student protests in Montreal, no one really did anything productive at the end.
Having said that, we encourage our readers and our members in Ontario to find ways to deal with tomorrow’s strike. One possibility would be for several mo
ms in one location to pool resources such as one baby sitter or care provider that could look after several kids. If this is something that you would like to do, feel free to use the forum boards and discuss with other moms in your area.
What are your thoughts on this strike and do you think it is fair to our kids to have these teachers act this way? While the teachers should be held accountable for not doing their job on a paid
day, should the government do more to stop such protests or respond to them in a different manner to avoid them in the future? Feel free to post your thoughts below.
