Ontario agrees to give some teachers, education workers, retroactive salary bumps

TORONTO - Ontario has agreed to give public high school teachers and some elementary school education workers retroactive salary increases to compensate them for constrained wages under a law known as Bill 124. Education workers represented by the Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario ratified a new contract last week and the union says today that the deal includes an agreement on a Bill 124 remedy. That 2019 law capped salary increases for public sector workers to one per cent a year for three years. An Ontario court has ruled it unconstitutional, but the government has appealed. ETFO says that the government has agreed to give its education workers an additional 0.75 per cent in salary increases for the first two years of the contract covered by Bill 124, and the amount for the third year will be decided by an arbitrator. The Ontario Secondary School Teachers' Federation says it has agreed to the same terms with the government and the two unions will present a “united front” wh