Teachers won’t fall in line, unions vow
Threat of labour action remains despite province’s decision to impose contracts
Education Minister Laurel Broten will repeal the controversial legislation she used Thursday to impose contracts on thousands of striking teachers and education workers, but don’t expect life at Ontario’s public schools to return to normal anytime soon.
After months of labour strife, Broten says she chose to impose contracts on thousands of people working in the province’s public school system, based on similar terms reached with Ontario’s Catholic teachers last July, in order to save the cash-strapped province $2 billion and protect gains in education and teaching jobs.
“In the interest of students, families and all Ontarians, I have been left with no other reasonable option,” the minister told reporters in Toronto.
Ontario families deserve “certainty and clarity, and that is why we put in place collective agreements,” Broten said.
Although unions have warned they will hold large-scale political protests if a contract is forced on them, Broten said any strike action is illegal now that a contract is in place. The two-year contract expires in August 2014.
The minister also expressed hope that union leaders won’t ask teachers to undertake illegal activities and expressed “sincere hope” that extracurricular activities will return to the province’s public schools.
That won’t happen, says the vicepresident of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation.
“When all other avenues for recourse are taken from us by the hammer of legislation, then we will fight back with the means we have available,” said Harvey Bischof.
“She did the one thing she absolutely shouldn’t have done, which is take an irrevocable step that’s going to have, at this point it would appear, a two-year impact on the operation of schools.”
Meanwhile, Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario (ETFO) president Sam Hammond warned parents not to expect business as usual when students return to school on Monday.
He reminded reporters that his members voted 92 per cent in favour of a one-day political protest, and said every option is on the table in terms of how his members will respond to the government’s action, including the future of extracurricular activities.
“You cannot legislate goodwill,” he said. “You cannot impose goodwill on my members.”
Broten called Bill 115 a “lightning rod,” and said it has accomplished what it was enacted to do.
“So given that the Putting Students First Act was only ever intended as a one-time measure by this government, it is important that as a sign of good faith and our commitment to future negotiations, that the act be repealed,” she said.
But Bischof said the damage has already been done.
“If you repeal capital punishment after you have executed a prisoner, you’ve still rung the death knell on the prisoner, and she’s rung the death knell on our goodwill with this move,” he said.
The contract freezes wages, slashes sick days and ends the longstanding practice of banking unused sick days. But it also includes several enhancements to the initial deal reached with the Ontario English Catholic Teachers’ Association. (Francophone teachers later agreed to similar terms.)
Those enhancements could cost the province up to $286 million.
The agreement now allows teachers to carry over sick days from the previous year to top-up sick days that will be paid out at less than the full rate in the case of a serious illness, but they still can’t bank them.
Teachers who haven’t served for enough years to qualify for a retirement gratuity — a perk that teachers have now lost — but who have still banked unused sick days, will receive a one-time cash payout.
But even these concessions from the government don’t make the pill easier to swallow, Bischof said.
“It really doesn’t help matters at all.”
The government’s latest move in the labour drama was also met with angry reaction from teachers and political foes.
“The government did something we would have done five months ago,” said Lisa MacLeod, the education critic for the Progressive Conservatives.
She called Broten’s decision to repeal a bill it recalled MPPs two weeks early last fall in order to pass “egregious,” and added that it sends a message to union leaders that the government will back down under pressure.
Others feared for the future of extracurricular activities in schools.
“I find it disappointing the unions would push (teachers) to continue using children as bargaining tools,” said Hana Bland, the mother of two Cairine Wilson Secondary School students.
The school’s parent council is using Facebook to encourage parents to get involved in school activities.
Annie Kidder of the advocacy group People for Education agreed, adding she hopes teachers find another way to express their disappointment than sitting out of coaching teams and leading student groups.
“How do we make it so it’s not kids paying in the end?” she said.
“Because we call them ‘extras,’ it’s as if they’re not a key component of education,” Kidder said. “They make a difference to student engagement and to a student’s chances for success in school.”
Sam Anderson, a student trustee for the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board, said he’s worried the situation could leave a sour taste in everyone’s mouth and may lead to more student protests in the coming months.
But, he added, it’s also a chance for high school students to show some initiative.
“Hopefully we’ll see a lot of students stepping up even more and working even harder to promote extracurriculars,” Anderson said.
While the unions have called Bill 115 undemocratic and said it makes it impossible to reach local agreements given the fiscal parameters it established, the government says the legislation was necessary to protect initiatives such as full-day kindergarten and small class sizes while dealing with a $14.4-billion provincial deficit.