Teacher contract negotiations normally rarely hit the news unless the talks go off the rails. With the school year approaching in August, deals emerge in an atmosphere of urgency where both the provincial government and the unions seek to avert back-to-school disruptions. Except for the protracted, bitter 2013-14 British Columbia teachers’ strike and lock-out, government-union negotiating teams much prefer to settle critical contract matters behind closed doors. Until the current round, the Nova Scotia government and the provincial teacher union, the NSTU, kept everything under wraps and the public completely in the dark.
A recent flurry of teacher union settlements in Canada’s largest province may have changed all that. Premier Kathleen Wynne set out to secure “net-zero” salary contracts, then reached an 11th hour deal with the Ontario Secondary Schools Teachers Federation (OSSTF) in late August 2015 for 2.5% over the next two years, including an additional paid holiday and improved sick leave. That OSSTF deal set the benchmark and appeared to provide the framework for deals with Ontario’s other teachers’ unions.
Pulling deals out of the fire on the eve of the school year raised suspicions about the avowedly teacher-friendly Wynne Government. A couple of weeks ago, the province was rocked by a series of explosive Toronto Globe and Mail revelations. The OSSTF settlement included a confidential $1 million pay-out to compensate that teachers’ union for its negotiating costs, and the payouts to all unions totalled $2.5 million. In addition to the $1 million paid out to the OSSTF, the Government paid $1 million to the catholic teachers’ union, plus $500,000 to the francophone teachers’ union in the current bargaining round. Going back to 2008, over three bargaining rounds, the total confidential payouts reached $3.47 million.
Digging deeper, Adrian Morrow of The Globe and Mail then unearthed new information: Ontario’s high school teachers’ union was sitting on more than $65-million in financial reserves while negotiating the secret $1-million payment from the Liberal government to cover is bargaining costs. Furthermore, that same union spent $1.8-million from that reserve fund on political activities and allocated hundreds of thousands more for bargaining expenses in the year before it negotiated the government payout.
While Ontario bargaining deals are dominating the education news cycle, teacher talks are proceeding very quietly in Nova Scotia. Taking a page from the Ontario Wynne Government playbook, Nova Scotia Premier Stephen McNeil and Finance Minister Randy Delorey broke with the normal protocol. Starting in August 2015, they prepared the ground for a five year period of public sector salary restraint. In late September, the Premier went public with an initial offer to the province’s 9,400 teachers: a five-year contract (0-0-0-1-1) totaling 2 per cent (2015-2019).
The Nova Scotia Government staked out its ground with the public, putting the province’s “ability to pay” on the table. After noting that 40 per cent of all newer teachers (years 1 to 10) would still get their step increases, the Premier also signaled that, in return, nothing else would be taken away. That suggested that the province’s costly extra qualification teacher salary upgrade system (exploited by teachers taking Drake University online education courses), ending winter storm season PD days, and removing principals from the union would remain ‘untouchables.’
Teachers unions wield tremendous power in most, if not all, Canadian provincial education systems. In British Columbia, the Liberal Government of Christy Clark has survived intense labour battles, work-to-rule protests and lengthy disruptions, most fought over upholding a 2003 settlement removing class size and class composition from the provincial contracts. Successive BC governments have succeeded in containing education costs and maintaining student performance standards, in spite of recurrent education sector conflict.
Three provinces, Ontario, BC and Nova Scotia, each confront formidable teachers’ unions and seem to be taking differing approaches. Canada’s Pacific province is renowned for its periodic “class struggles.” Ontario is more typical: taking tough at the outset, then caving-in at the bargaining table. Some independent education observers, most notably Margaret Wente of The Globe and Mail, see the Ontario bargaining payouts and contract climb-downs as confirmation that “teachers’ unions rule” the roost. Whether Nova Scotia holds the line or abandons the field is now anyone’s guess.
Why do Canadian teachers’ unions hold such a sway over the provincial school systems? Is the British Columbia approach to controlling costs and restoring management rights to the assignment of teaching staff the way to go? How common is the practice of paying the unions to negotiate their own provincial agreements? Who really gains from hard ball teacher negotiations?
The process was totally new in Ontario, centralized and 2 tier. It is still not over.
The negotiations were long and painful mainly due to a long list of demand from the boards eminating from principals officially the OPC. It took many months to convince the boards and principals that their long list of roll backs and take backs were never going to happen.
You can read about them all here
http://Www.thelittleeducationreport.ca
It was the provinces ‘baby’ relictantly agreed to by the boards and the unions. The province wanted it not to be declared a failure and thus greased the wheels to make it happen.
Many people don’t like it but many people are naive about what it takes to get an agreement in a so called net zero environment.
A scandal? Well no laws were broken. There is no “wrong doing”. If the government does not want to pick up future costs due to their experience here the we will continue with long painful root canal negotiations.
One thing you can be sure of. Teachers will not sit and watch quietly while governments try to lower their standard of living or increase class sizes.
They will fight and government batter know they will fight.
The Globe and Mail’s intrepid Queen’s Park reporter Adrian Morrow has ferreted out the details of the latest settlement proposed for, and negotiated with, Ontario’s elementary teachers. Here’s his (November 8, 2015) summary:
“The agreement has not been made public, but The Globe obtained a 52-page confidential document spelling out its terms.
ETFO is the only one of the province’s teachers’ unions not to receive direct government compensation for bargaining costs, after vowing last month on principle not to accept such a payment.
The union did, however, win some other victories at the bargaining table.
One provision will see the province spend $600,000 to provide more professional development for supply teachers.
“The Crown shall create a one-time Education Programs – Other (EPO) grant in the sum of $600,000 to be used solely for the purpose of providing further professional development to ETFO Occasional Teacher members in the areas of health and safety, workplace violence, serious student incidents, and safe intervention,” the deal reads. “The distribution model for this EPO grant will be determined in consultation with OPSBA [the Ontario Public School Boards’ Association] and ETFO.”
Elementary teachers will receive the same pay bump as high school and Catholic teachers: a 1 per cent lump sum payment this year, a 1 per cent raise next year and a 0.5 per cent raise partway through the next school year. The pay hikes are to be paid for by redirecting funding from “elementary professional learning,” a program that provides courses for teachers to upgrade their skills; by adding another professional activity day and cutting one day of class time; and by allowing teachers to cash in banked sick days early for a lower rate.
The Liberal government has insisted all labour deals be “net zero,” meaning money for raises must be found by cutting something else in the contract.
The agreement also appears to provide for stricter enforcement of class-size caps. One section commits the government to “monitor FDK [full-day kindergarten] class size for compliance” with government regulations, and another commits school boards to “make every effort to limit FDK/Grade 1 split grades where feasible.” A third section says the government, union and school boards will set up a nine-member committee to review class sizes in Grades 4 to 8 and develop “options to address any non-compliance” with caps.
Class-size caps are popular with teachers and parents, but can be financially tricky as they effectively lock school boards into a guaranteed level of staffing.
Other sections of the deal include:
A guarantee ETFO can continue its court challenge of Bill 115, the 2012 legislation that imposed terms on teachers in that year’s round of collective bargaining. ETFO argues the Bill violated the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. “ETFO, [school boards] and the Crown agree that the contends of the Memorandum of Settlement … cannot be relied up by the Crown in respect of any argument that the Charter challenge to Bill 115 is moot,” the deal says.
A provision to roll all benefit trusts, many of which are currently managed by individual school boards, into a single Employee Life and Health Trust under ETFO’s control. The province is to pay ETFO $7-million to cover the trust’s start-up costs. Each school board, meanwhile, must pay in $5,100 per full-time teaching position, as well as the costs for retirees, plus 4 per cent increases in each of the next two years. The deals with high school and Catholic teachers provided for similar trusts.
A compromise on report cards and parent/teacher interviews. Teachers will be required to provide report cards with full comments by Dec. 11, but they will not be obliged to conduct parent/teacher interviews. Teachers may do the interviews at their discretion. ETFO had been refusing to write report card comments or conduct parent meetings as part of work-to-rule action.”
Comment:
For the full news report, see http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/ontario-elementary-teachers-get-raise-vigilance-on-class-sizes/article27171352/
It’s amazing what’s in such teacher contract agreements.
I haven’t read the Globe article, but at present there are no “caps” on class sizes in Ontario for FDK (on the one hand) or for grades 4-8 (on the other). There are requirements for boardwide averages, but this is far from being the same thing. Some schools which shall remain nameless serve a very high-income population and have very small classes, as few as 10-15 in the regular grades, while other schools have FDK loads of 35-39, and similar class sizes in grades 4-8. The boards can “average” these out and end up within the range the ministry suggests (not requires). There is a “hard cap” on primary grade of 20 students per class, but as many as 23 can be allowed but an exemption is required.