BACK TO THE FUTURE
Is teacher unrest an echo of 1997?
Laura Wheeler was a high school student at Glebe Collegiate in 1997 when the teachers in Ontario went on strike.
“At the time, I was just excited that every night of the week I could hang out with my friends,” she says, recalling the unexpected fall holiday that kept 2.1 million elementary and secondary students out of class for two weeks.
Twenty three years later, Wheeler is the one walking a picket line. A teacher at Ridgemont High School, she’s protesting another Conservative government’s making major changes to the province’s schools.
“It’s certainly different now,” she says. “I’m more aware of the issues.”
Wheeler says she has two major concerns: larger classes, which she says will make it harder for her to give individual attention to students while reducing the number of courses available, and the government’s plan to require students to take two online courses in high school.
Members of Wheeler’s union, the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation (OSSTF), staged three day-long strikes in December and have withdrawn some services.
OSSTF is just one of four major Ontario education unions engaged in tense negotiations.
Students head back to class next week after a Christmas break to the possibility of more labour disruptions.
Public elementary teachers have also withdrawn some services, and their union warns that teachers will do “whatever it takes to defend students and public education” and are “prepared to escalate” job actions.
The issues are somewhat different, but there are striking similarities between the conflict today and during the 1997 walkout, which at the time was the largest teachers strike in Canadian history.
Consider the political backdrop in 1997. The Conservatives under Mike Harris had won power on the promise of a Common Sense Revolution that would cut the deficit and lower taxes.
The government was intent on cutting the education budget. “There’s enough money being wasted that we still should be able to find some efficiencies,” Harris told reporters the day in October 1997 when 126,000 teachers walked off the job, the New York Times reported.
The Harris government also planned to overhaul the education system, transferring power from local school boards to the provincial government for setting tax rates and class sizes, increasing the number of teaching days and cutting teacher preparation time.
Education unions fought the changes, warning that quality public education and local control were at risk and they feared the loss of as many as 10,000 teaching jobs.
Fast-forward to the current dispute, featuring Premier Doug Ford’s Conservative government, also targeting education spending.
The government’s plan to slow the growth of education spending hinges on increasing class sizes, eliminating teachers by attrition. Class size increases announced last spring would eliminate about 10,000 teaching jobs, mainly in high schools, where the average class size would increase from 22 to 28 students and mandatory online courses would have an average of 35 students.
Education Minister Stephen Lecce has since offered to scale that back, proposing an increase to an average of 25 students if that is coupled with an elimination of class size caps. He also reduced the number of mandatory online courses from four to two.
Ford’s government has also suggested there is fat to be cut, offering to send independent auditors to school boards to find efficiencies.
Marshall Jarvis, the president of the Ontario English Catholic Teachers Association in 1997, said the parallels between the two disputes are striking.
“It’s like I’m reliving my past,” said Jarvis, now retired.
In both cases, the Conservatives did not campaign on some of the changes to schools they introduced after being elected with majority governments, said Jarvis.
In both cases, changes were introduced that unions thought should have been part of bargaining, he said. There was also a similar cabinet shuffle.
As conflict escalated shortly before the 1997 strike then-education minister John Snobelen was moved out of the job.
He had been criticized for saying it was necessary to create a “useful crisis” in order to make reforms to education.
Last summer, former education minister Lisa Thompson suffered a similar fate when she was shuffled to make way for Lecce. Thompson had suggested that thousands of students across the province who protested her government’s changes were union pawns and said larger classes would make students more resilient.
In both disputes, the government
and unions lobbied for public support. In fact, the slogans and underlying messages are almost interchangeable.
Harris talked about education union “bosses,” while Ford has called them “thugs.”
In one commercial, Harris wondered why teachers would try to prevent reforms that would put an end to larger classes, require teachers to “spend a little more time with their students” and introduce standardized report cards and testing.
“Our kids deserve better,” said the ad. Harris also emphasized that the strike was illegal.
“We live in a law-abiding society. Breaking the law is not the right example. Let’s put our children first.”
Lecce has accused education unions of being primarily concerned with their wages. He calls members of OSSTF irresponsible for striking and emphasizes how much money teachers earn and what a raise would cost the government.
“It’s time in this province that we put our kids first,” he says in one ad.
Unions in both disputes portray their members as defending students whose education will be damaged.
Back in 1997, a video sponsored by teachers’ unions depicted photos of sad children, while a narrator warned that government cuts “mean even larger classes with less time and attention for every student.”
“Teachers are all that stand between this government and further cuts that will compromise your child’s education,” said the ad. “We’re out to protect classroom education.”
Current union campaigns adopt a slogan that was also used back in 1997: “Cuts hurt kids.”
They also include billboards, social media ads, downloadable buttons, signs and cartoons criticizing the Ford government.
Union leaders say issues like class sizes, mandatory e-learning, support for high-needs students and violence in the classroom are the major issues in bargaining, not wages.
Lecce says the government has been reasonable, offering education unions raises of one per cent a year, the maximum allowed under new legislation restricting public sector wages.
OSSTF has asked for a raise reflecting the increase in the cost of living, currently about two per cent. The other education unions have not made public their wage increase requests.
Bargaining is expected to resume in January.
Back in 1997, the walkout ended when teachers agreed to go back to work.
Most of the changes proposed by the Harris government were adopted, although they backed down on a proposal to allow non-certified teachers in schools.
There is a difference this time, however. The 1997 walkout was an illegal strike. Teachers were not paid for their time on the picket line and the government sought a court injunction ordering them back to the classroom.
This time, three of the four education unions now bargaining are in a legal strike position. Their members have voted overwhelmingly — as high as 98 per cent — in favour of striking if necessary, notes Charles Pascal, a professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto.
While strike votes are a common tactic used to pressure the other side in bargaining, Pascal said the votes should send the government a message.
He believes the teachers and other education workers, including educational assistants, early childhood educators, office administrators and custodians, have a lot of public support.
Parents have already seen the negative effect this year as class sizes from Grades 4 to 12 increased and some programs for high-needs students were not renewed, he said.
Lecce, however, says parents are tired of labour unrest every few years and relentless escalation by education unions.
His predecessor from 1997, Snobelen, has another solution to what he calls teachers engaged in “endless cycles of bashing governments of every political stripe and walking off the job.”
It’s time to end teacher strikes, Snobelen wrote in his Toronto Sun column. He said a report he commissioned back in 1996 recommended an end to work-to-rules and strikes and a better definition of teacher duties and hours of work along with non-negotiable management rights. The report suggested the use of mandatory arbitration by an independent court.
“Ontario teachers should enjoy compensation packages at or near the best in Canada without resorting to job action that erodes their professional standing and needlessly annoys parents,” wrote Snobelen.