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Strikes coming soon to an Ontario school near you

Latest strikes throw up picket lines without a purpose, staffed by teachers without a cause.


Thestar.com
May 4, 2015
By Martin Regg Cohn

Nearly 70,000 high school students have been banished from classes so far. Roughly 2 million students across Ontario could be next.

For no good reason.

This isn’t the first time a powerful teachers union has opted to take its frustrations out on students, using them as pawns in a perennial power struggle with the government. But this may be the most unjustifiable, unconscionable and incomprehensible school strike in recent memory - a cynical exercise in manipulation and deception on the flimsiest of pretexts.

The minds of our children are left to idle while union leaders play mind games with parents - and engage in political game-playing with the government.

First to be struck were Durham’s 21,000 students three weeks ago, while Peel’s 42,000 students were the latest to be locked out Monday - bookends that form a deliberate strategy to ratchet up pressure on both flanks of the GTA.

These are not merely symbolic one-day protest strikes by the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation. Once the teachers go out, they stay out, leaving students to languish until the end of term, by which point the term might be lost.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. After the upheaval in the last round of negotiations - when the Dalton McGuinty government used extraordinary legislation to a salary freeze in 2012 - teachers and school boards sat down with his successor, Kathleen Wynne, to map out a better way.

After years of improvising, they formalized a central negotiating table to bring more order to the system: wages and other key elements were to be negotiated at a province-wide level, given that the government is the ultimate paymaster, leaving local disagreements to be thrashed out with regional school boards.

That was the deal - or more precisely, the agreed process. It hasn’t happened that way, for two reasons.

First, the cash-strapped provincial government is once again arguing that it has no money budgeted for pay increases, which understandably stokes tensions with teachers. Most teachers are resentful of restraint, but they know it’s not a ruse.

Union leaders, however, cannot just play nice and go along - or they would ultimately be ousted by their memberships. They have to put up a fight. And that’s what we are now seeing play out, with more and more students taking the hit day after day.

Sources suggest that negotiations at the central table have progressed reasonably well, all things considered. In fact, that’s why there is not yet a province-wide strike - because talks are still on.

Why, then, are students in Durham entering their third week without classes - a scandalously long interval? And why are students in Mississauga out of class with no end in sight?

OSSTF president Paul Elliott lapses into circumlocutions worthy of a circumambulating picketer. He claims teachers are fussed about professional autonomy, performance appraisals and class sizes - “not monetary issues.”

Why are teachers really on strike, as opposed to pretexts?

At a union meeting long ago, the OSSTF leadership quietly mapped out a precise sequence of local job actions: Durham, Sudbury, Peel, Waterloo, Ottawa, Thunder Bay and Halton were chosen because that’s where teachers were deemed most loyal - and their strike pay more affordable.

How did the OSSTF president know in advance that local bargaining would supposedly bog down at these boards? He didn’t.

It’s not about grievances, it’s about gotcha. These are picket lines without a purpose, staffed by teachers without a cause.

Their cumulative pay has increased by 24.5 per cent since the Liberals took power in 2003, prompting some labour leaders outside the education sector to question, privately, how long the public will tolerate more strikes. At some point, the Wynne government will have to face up to the potential pain teachers unions are willing to inflict on students.

The premier took power two years ago on a promise of labour peace - which she promptly delivered with a few sweeteners to get extracurricular activities restored. Now, she is out of money and magic.

Sources suggest there is a deal to be had, that the unions are merely adopting the usual tough guy tactics to show they mean business. For no good reason.

Both sides know that back-to-work legislation would be a messy business, given recent court rulings - which suggests the teachers may be on strike longer than they imagine, with students paying the price. If the unions choose more picket lines, the premier will have to pick a lane.