2 education labour contracts down, 2 more to go

Public elementary teachers, CUPE still haven’t reached deals with province

Yorkregion.com
Aug. 26, 2015
By Lisa Queen

Even though public high school and Catholic English elementary and secondary teachers have reached tentative settlements in the last week, David Clegg isn’t sure whether or not to be optimistic.

Clegg is the York Region president of the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario, which has yet to reach a deal with the provincial government.

The next date for bargaining is Sept. 1. In the meantime, the union has announced it is ramping up its work-to-rule campaign.

Although teachers will participate in extracurricular activities, they won’t take part in field trips, “meet the teacher” nights, collect money for school-related activities, participate in fundraising activities, email principals and vice-principals outside school hours unless there is a safety issue and collect or distribute school or board paperwork to students.

Although the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation reached a tentative deal Aug. 20 and the Ontario English Catholic Teachers Association came to a tentative settlement Tuesday, Clegg said the chances of public elementary teachers reaching an agreement remain up in the air.

Without seeing the details of the tentative deals, it’s difficult to speculate if the public elementary teachers can reach their own agreement, he said.

“Without knowing the specific details of the tentative deal with OSSTF, it is difficult to comment on how it may or may not improve ETFO chances of reaching a settlement,” Clegg said.

“If it is a ‘net zero’ outcome as the government would have the public believe, the question needs to be answered what was given up to achieve a less than the rate of inflation wage increase. The prospect of a provincial benefit plan would not be good for ETFO members in York Region.”

Clegg slammed the government for creating tensions with teachers’ unions that led to job action over the past several months, only to begin putting fires out on the eve of a new school year.

“It does suggest that the Wynne Liberal government has changed its outlook on bargaining in the education sector and has chosen to muzzle OPSBA (the Ontario Public School Boards’ Association),” he said.

“It appears clearer now that the failures of last spring fall at the feet of OPSBA and the Wynne Liberals for allowing OPSBA to make demands that provoked job action.”

Meanwhile, tensions remain high for the union representing 55,000 education workers, such as educational assistants, office administrators, custodians, early childhood educators, library technicians, speech pathologists and others, according to Elena Di Nardo, president of the Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 2331 in York Region.

“CUPE is nowhere close (to a deal). It (reaching tentative deals with teachers’ unions) doesn’t make any difference, I don’t think, because teachers are completely different and separate from CUPE members. We’re just hoping that now they have settled with some employee groups, they are going to dedicate more time to school support workers,” she said.

“The province does want this all (labour strife with teachers and education workers) off their plate. They want school to start in September with no disruptions, but it all depends on what happens at the bargaining table.”

Although the union is in a legal strike position during the first week of school, bargaining has been scheduled for Sept. 20 and 21.

Few details of the tentative deals with the unions representing the public high school teachers and the Catholic teachers are being made public until the settlements are ratified.

“The details will be made public as the ratification rolls out,” Wynne said after the settlement with the high school teachers was reached.

She will not say if taxpayers will be pleased.

“I know that the people who have been very worried about whether their kids were going to be in school will be very pleased. I know teachers will be pleased because they’ll get to school,” she said.

York Region District School Board is relieved public high school teachers have reached a deal at the provincial level and continues to bargain at the local level with employee groups, spokesperson Licinio Miguelo said.

“We continue to have a good working relationship with all our employee groups,” he said.