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 said Tuesday that the deal includes an agreement on a Bill 124 remedy.

“Since its unconstitutional inception, ETFO has denounced Bill 124 and challenged the Ford government’s interference and overreach,” president Karen Brown wrote in a statement.

That 2019 law capped salaries increasing for public sector workers to one per cent a year for three years. An Ontario court has declared it unconstitutional, ruling that it infringes on the workers’ rights to freedom of association and collective bargaining.

The government has appealed, but ETFO says any future court rulings won’t affect the retroactive pay.

Since it was found unconstitutional, arbitrators have awarded additional retroactive pay to several groups of workers, including nurses and other hospital workers, ORNGE air ambulance paramedics, and college faculty.

It has also been a major issue in this round of education bargaining, with the unions representing teachers and other workers raising the issue of retroactive compensation