STRAINED RELATIONS
Teachers list grievances
The STF says the Saskatchewan government needs to start listening if it has any hopes of repairing damaged relations with the province’s teachers.
In a decision handed down late Friday afternoon, almost nine months after contract talks broke down, a labour arbitrator awarded the province’s 13,500 teachers a new two-year contract that will expire on Aug. 31, 2019.
The decision also noted how the relationship between the two parties was “badly in need of repair.”
Asked how the relationship can be mended, Saskatchewan Teachers’ Federation president Pat Maze referred to a long list of grievances.
“We are kind of in a situation of dealing with legislation that government has changed arbitrarily or changed specifically that has damaged the relationship,” Maze said.
Strained relations between the two parties stretch back to 2009, when the province removed the ability of school boards to set the mill rate.
Noting the province was in a financial shortfall “due to a deliberate policy of lowering taxes,” the arbitrator said that since moving to a provincewide mill rate in 2009, there has been a “drastic reduction” in property-tax rates and revenues, which has “squeezed local school boards.”
Maze added that local school boards not being able to set their own mill rates has made it “very difficult” to bargain with the province at a local school board level.
In 2017, “Stop Bill 63” became a rallying cry among school board trustees, school staff and parents charging that the province was allowing additional powers of the minister to generally govern the activities and affairs of school boards.
Despite widespread pushback that the province did not consult enough, the law passed.
“There’s all kinds of things government has done, using their legislative ability, without consultation, that has substantially affected the relationship, and I would say that really it is up to government to start listening and to make amends on some of the things they have already damaged in the relationship,” said Maze. “Most of it goes to a lack of consultation, and so I would pin it directly on them using their legislative ability in an irresponsible fashion.”
Negotiations over the new contract did not help repair relations between the province and teachers.
Talks between the two parties broke down, largely because the province refused to change its mandate of seeking a 3.67-per-cent wage reduction (or equivalent savings) from teachers. The arbitrator noted the “demand” for such a salary reduction from teachers was “unprecedented, even during the near-bankruptcy of the 1990s and the global recession in 20082009.”
We are kind of in a situation of dealing with legislation that government has changed arbitrarily or changed specifically that has damaged the relationship.
The arbitrator settled on a contract that will see educators getting no retroactive raise but a oneper-cent increase over the course of the contract.
Wyant, who heavily courted teachers in his leadership bid less than a year ago, was asked how he can mend relations with them.
“We’re continuing to have conversations with school boards and teachers,” Wyant said, noting he was meeting with teachers this week, “as part of my commitment to get out and meet with teachers directly, to get out and talk about issues that are important to them from a local perspective.”
The two parties are expected to begin negotiating another contract in May 2019.