Sask. teachers intensify job action Monday with provincewide work-to-rule

All Saskatchewan teachers will halt extracurricular ac‐ tivities and voluntary su‐ pervision on Monday, in‐ tensifying job action during drawn-out contract negoti‐ ations with the provincial government.

The labour-management dispute between the Saskatchewan government and Saskatchewan Teachers' Federation (STF) has been going on for months, with both sides blaming the other for halted negotiations and the accompanying effects on classrooms and extracurricu‐ lar activities.

Beginning Monday, teachers will begin work-torule, meaning there will be no voluntary services and teachers will begin their shift 15 minutes before the bell rings and end 15 minutes af‐ ter.

In essence, that means teachers will withdraw from all field trips, extracurricular activities including competi‐ tions and games, graduation celebrations, book fairs, be‐ fore- and after-school super‐ vision (beyond the 15 min‐ utes before and after school) and noon-hour supervision.

"Obviously I'm there to learn, and I want to learn, but having stuff like that taken away is just unmotivating be‐ cause there just seems to be a lot less to look forward to in a school day," said Kaylee Voth.

She's a Grade 12 student at Herbert School in Herbert, Sask., home to about 700 people according to the 2021 Statistics Canada census.

She's a multi-sport athlete and finishing her final year at the school - which is small enough that Grade 12 gradu‐ ation is the only large gradu‐ ation celebration - and finds it difficult to come to terms with the results of the job ac‐ tion.

Among the activities being withheld is graduation plan‐ ning.

Voth responded to a re‐ cent Saskatchewan Teachers' Federation social media post, conveying her disappoint‐ ment with the ongoing job action and its effect on stu‐ dents.

Voth said she does not feel she knows enough about the negotiations to choose sides. She said she didn't write the post to be ac‐ cusatory, but wanted to "share my thoughts as re‐ spectfully as possible."

"It's all being put towards the right thing for the teachers and the future of education, but at the same time there's people being af‐ fected by this," Voth said. Failed negotiations Teachers voted in favour of job action last year and began mid-January with oneday provincewide strikes. That was followed by a series of rotating strikes and with‐ drawals of voluntary duties.

Much of the contract dis‐ pute centered around class size and complexity.

STF president Samantha Becotte said Friday that the union was asking for one line in the collective agreement to ensure a multi-year funding agreement with the Saskatchewan School Boards Association would benefit students directly and not be put toward debt or other uses.

Becotte said the govern‐ ment declined, leading to es‐

calating job action.

In a statement to CBC last week, Education Minister Je‐ remy Cockrill described the job action as "disappointing."

He said the STF is "moving the goalposts and prioritizing job action that will directly impact students and families instead of returning to the bargaining table."