Premier Doug Ford is warning teachers' unions against taking any action to protest his government's move to increase class sizes to save money.

"If the head of the unions want to hurt the children of this province by doing walkouts and everything else, I'd think twice if I were them," Ford said Friday in Ottawa where he was touting the province's $1.2 billion investment in a local light rail transit project.

"You know I think the world of teachers but I might differentiate between labour and labour leadership, public and private sector unions," the premier said.

"I love the front-line teachers and we may not see eye to eye with the head of the unions because all they want to do is collect their union dues and start pocketing (them) into their pockets," he said.

Ford's comments came after the Ontario Secondary School Teachers' Federation said a high school with 800 students would lose 11 teachers — from 46 to 35 — due to changes introduced by his government.

OSSTF president Harvey Bischof said that's the toll from increasing the average secondary school class size from 22 student to 28 over the next four years and it could trigger "disruption" this fall with teacher contracts expiring at the end of August.

That's because OSSTF members "will not concede" to bigger classes in their local collective agreements.

In total, the union expects to lose 5,700 teachers in English-language public high schools alone.

Bischof said manufacturing a division between union leaders and members "is an old, tired tactic by right-wing premiers."

"We represent the membership. We are an extremely democratic organization," he said, noting members voted to re-elect him just a couple of weeks ago.

"The premier's expressed interest in front-line teachers is rather undermined by the fact that he's trying to remove 25 per cent of teachers. It sounds like rank hypocrisy."

As for Ford's suggestion union dues may be misspent, Bischof said the OSSTF's budget is "extremely transparently accounted for" and such unfounded accusations by a premier "are beneath the dignity of his office."

Across all school boards, about 10,000 teaching positions are expected to be eliminated, as classes in Grades 4 to 8 grow by an average of one student, and an average of six in high school.

The Progressive Conservative government has said class caps in kindergarten and the primary grades will remain.

Education Minister Lisa Thompson has said the larger class sizes will prepare students for the real world.

"We're hearing from professors and employers alike that they are lacking coping skills and they are lacking resiliency," Thompson told CBC Radio's Metro Morning host Matt Galloway on Wednesday.

Her comments provoked an outcry, but Ford urged teachers to see the big picture.

"I worry about the front-line teachers. I worry about the students. I worry about the 50 per cent of our Grade 6 students that are failing math. I'm worried about one-third of our teachers that can't even pass the same math test the Grade 6 students are failing," he said.

The premier, elected last June on a promise of making $6 billion in cuts to the $150 billion budget, noted that Finance Minister Vic Fedeli spending plan on April 11 will be more moderate than his critics fear.

"We're going to be responsible. We aren't going to go in there and hack and slash. We're going to make sure we do it responsibly," he said.

Robert Benzie is the Star's Queen's Park bureau chief and a reporter covering Ontario politics. Follow him on Twitter: @robertbenzie

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Kristin Rushowy is a Toronto-based reporter covering Ontario politics. Follow her on Twitter: @krushowy

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