Officially, Villa Maria High School is closed for a snow day, but members of their support staff still showed up.
That’s because they’re staging a one-day strike in protest of contract negotiations between their union and the school.
These staffers work in administration, I.T., guidance counsellors and maintenance, among other jobs.
They unionized a few years ago and have been fighting for a contract since 2013, which drove them to make a picketed plea Friday.
"We are looking for respect. We are looking for our rights. We are not asking any more than that. But please Villa Maria, we love you, so love us back, said school administrator Diane Roy.
The workers met with school managment about 30 times since then, and they just aren't happy with what their employers are putting forward so they made the decision to go on a one-day strike Thursday night.
The union says it's battling for better working conditions, not money.
They say theirs is a tense work environment with intimidation.
They're also fighting for seniority and trying to prevent certain hiring conditions from being made.
The school, Roy is, “firing people that already been there for years, replacing them by people, you know, that we never know where they come from, instead of taking the internal people.
They are taking the outside people, coming from agencies. This is not right,” she said.
Parents and students learned that the school was closed on its website and voicemail.
Mathieu Morin, president of the support staff union, says that the last time they had a snow day was in the ice storm of 1998.
“This is the kind of tactics that the school uses. It's always disinformation. There is no collaboration and even sometimes the parents are not really told what is going on,” he said.
The school did not return requests for comment.
Not all were stressed by the situation. One young woman interviewed by CTV Montreal was beaming upon learning of the closure. She said that the locked gates meant that she was off the hook for a pair of exams scheduled for Friday.
