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TORONTO — Teachers who went on illegal strikes earlier this year will be allowed to make pension contributions for that period of time but the same agreement won’t apply to future illegal job actions, Ontario’s education minister said Monday.

Public secondary school teachers in three boards went on strike this spring but are being exempted from a rule that prohibits pension payments during illegal job action, Liz Sandals said Monday.

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The government didn’t want to penalize the teachers since their union, the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation, led them to believe the strike was legal, though it was later found to be illegal by the Ontario Labour Relations Board, she said.

“I had a lot of sympathy with the members who thought they were on a legal strike, then who found out at the end of it that they were on an illegal strike,” Sandals said. “The individual teachers didn’t say, ‘I’m going to go on an illegal strike.”’