How?

How the Union Certification Process Works

Recently, your ECE colleagues in the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board and in the Toronto Catholic District School Board voted decisively for ETFO to be the union that represents them. Representation votes like these are conducted by the Ontario Labour Relations Board (OLRB).  Here is how the union certification process works.

Signing Membership Applications

As an Early Childhood Educator working in the Early Learning Program, you may be contacted by ETFO and asked to sign a membership application. The decision to sign an application is yours alone and is kept in confidence. Your employer will never know the name of anyone who has signed a union application.

Certification

Once ETFO has a sufficient number of applications signed in an individual school board, it can apply for certification at the OLRB. The minimum threshold for the number of applications is 40%, meaning 40% of all the ECEs who are employed in that particular school board. Once the certification application is filed, the vote happens very quickly – usually in a week. The OLRB conducts this secret ballot vote at one or more locations. If ETFO is successful in the vote, the OLRB will then issue a certificate which gives ETFO the right to represent the ECEs in that school board.

Collective Bargaining

Once the certificate is received, the ETFO provincial staff will assist the newly unionized ECEs to set up their own local ETFO organization. The next step is to negotiate a collective agreement that will set out salary, insured benefits, leaves, and other working conditions. Throughout this process, provincial staff will work with members of the new ECE local to ensure that the collective agreement they achieve meets their particular professional needs.