TORONTO – Ontario Premier Doug Ford was staring down a storm of indefinite school closures, a new law no one obeyed and warnings of widespread economy-disrupting work stoppages when he decided last weekend there was only one way out.
On Sunday afternoon, Ford, his top advisers and his education secretary got on the phone and laid out their plan – in an escalating labor dispute with education workers, the government first had to back down.
“There were no other options left,” said a senior government source, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the process publicly.
At the time of the call, tensions between the government and the Canadian Union of Public Education Employees had reached a fever pitch.
The government passed legislation on Thursday that imposed a contract on workers and prohibited them from striking.  The law included the controversial notwithstanding clause — which allows a government to override Charter rights for a five-year period — to protect itself from constitutional challenges.
But workers, including teaching assistants, librarians and custodians, walked off the job Friday anyway and planned to stay away indefinitely, prompting hundreds of schools to shut down in-person learning.
The Ontario Labor Relations Board was weighing whether to declare the strike illegal, which the government saw as the first step in hitting the union with heavy fines for continued industrial action.  And with large donations flowing into CUPE, the threat of fines did not appear to be the deterrent the government had hoped for.
Meanwhile, unions across the country were threatening action in support of CUPE – including in Ford’s beloved and critical auto sector, according to union officials involved in the planning.
The Canadian Press spoke to several people close to the negotiations, including senior government and union officials, whose interviews offer a glimpse into a frenzied nine-day battle that ultimately ended with both sides convinced to keep their strongest weapons.
On Monday, Ford held a press conference to announce a “massive olive branch.”
“Our government is willing to cancel the legislation … but only if CUPE agrees to show a similar gesture of good faith by ending their strike,” he said.
The union agreed to let the workers go back to their jobs, the kids went back to class the next day, and negotiations resumed.
Sources revealed, however, that the government did not believe the situation would escalate as it did.
Negotiations with CUPE were difficult from the start.  Over the summer, both sides even disagreed on the timetable for starting negotiations.
After months of tense negotiations, the union announced on October 30 that members would strike in five days if no deal was reached.  The government presented a new offer but also said that if CUPE did not call off strike plans, contract enforcement legislation would be tabled.
The bill included precautionary use of the derogation clause.  The government believed this would ensure workers would not strike, at least not for more than perhaps a day, sources said.
“We didn’t think they would just say, ‘We’re going to strike illegally,'” said one of the government sources.  “We just didn’t consider it.”
Using the derogation clause would prove to be a fundamental miscalculation.
With the government already debating the bill, CUPE tabled a counteroffer late on Tuesday, but the government said it would not negotiate unless the strike planned for Friday was called off.
But as the strike approached, the legislation continued to move forward, and unions across the country began debating how to stop the bill.
On Thursday, the government made another offer, minutes before the law was set to be enacted.
Ford rushed into a room across the street from his office in parliament with Education Minister Steven Lecce and Labor Minister Monte McNaughton.  The employees were coming and going in a flurry.
Fifteen minutes later, a grim Ford appeared.
“We’re working on it,” he told reporters as he returned to his office.
Behind the scenes, Ford and his top lieutenants had decided to freeze the bill as they waited to contact CUPE.
“I thought we had a deal,” Ford said at a news conference this week.  “All of a sudden they came back to my office and said, ‘There’s no deal.’  I was crushed.”
But Laura Walton, the president of CUPE’s Ontario School Board Union Council, said she could not fully consider Thursday’s latest proposal because it was never made official.
“We were told there was a potential deal,” she told The Canadian Press.  “It was never implemented in writing.  At that time, the mediator said, “We are done now.”
The mediator broke off the talks because the two sides were too far apart.
Lecce then held a press conference on Thursday to announce that there was no deal and that the legislation would pass.
CUPE workers and education supporters protested on Friday, mainly outside politicians’ offices.  Hundreds of thousands of children had to stay home, despite the government’s promise to “keep kids in class”.
Meanwhile, the government took CUPE to the industrial relations board in a bid to have the strike declared illegal in a hearing that lasted into the early hours of the weekend.  But even if the council ruled in favor of the province — no decision has been issued and the issue is contentious with both sides back at the table — the government did not have the power to immediately impose stiff fines.
“They are now acting illegally, but we are not responsible for enforcement,” a government source said of the tenuous situation the province would still be in.  “So what’s left for us to do?”
Another source said union leaders could have been held in contempt of court, but nothing like that would happen quickly and keeping children out of school for weeks was not a pleasant option.
Meanwhile, labor leaders—some friendly to the Ford administration, some less so—began whispering pleas and warnings in his ear.
Unions across the country — even unions and manufacturing unions that had backed Ford in the spring election — were taken aback by the legislation’s inclusion of the extension clause, which they called an attack on Charter rights.
By the end of the week, union leaders gathered in Toronto with two goals: to put Ford on the line in an effort to lower temperatures, and to plan a massive work stoppage that would hit multiple sectors if it didn’t budge.
Public sector unions were on the phone with the prime minister’s office throughout Friday and the weekend.  Private-sector union leaders, including the International Labor Union of North America and other unions that otherwise support Ford, have been talking directly with the prime minister and the labor secretary, sources said.
Pro-Ford unions have been urging the prime minister to give both sides a way out of an indefinite strike, promising to scrap the law as long as CUPE ends its strike.  Other unions, such as Unifor, pushed a similar message, but with a warning that government inaction would lead to “massive resistance”.
“There is a mood out there among workers, ready to stand up for their rights,” Unifor President Lana Payne said at Ford’s office.  “And this legislation was like throwing gasoline on a fire.”
Unifor’s 300,000 members were ready to escalate the action for work, Payne said.  They planned to hit every sector, including their 40,000 auto workers in Ontario.
On Monday, Payne stood before a packed stage at a CUPE press conference with union leaders representing teachers, steelworkers, food manufacturers, construction workers, transportation workers, film and television production workers, federal civil servants, nurses, personal support workers , postal workers and professionals in the energy sector.
They were assigned to uncover plans for mass resistance.
CUPE national president Mark Hancock said plans included a mass rally in the legislature in November.  12 and “major employment action across the province and even across the country” from Monday 14 November.
Ford’s promise to repeal the legislation meant those plans were shelved, but Hancock said the pushback was about more than Ontario educators.
“Everybody expressed concern about the prime minister bringing this nuclear bomb,” he said in an interview, referring to the extension clause.
“If Premier Ford and the Conservatives got over it here, then it may come to a province near them in the near future.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published on November 10, 2022.