Opening Statement



Wednesday 11 March 2015

Teacher Strikes: What was ETFO Offered?




Thanks to Anon for the part of this missive below. I am looking online for the rest, though it is a slow process, and with the nice weather I like to get outside after a month or so of hibernating indoors. Anyway, I will add to this blog as more info becomes available Please stay tuned!

From the latest ETFO bulletin: OPSBA [Ontario Pubic School Board Association] and the Crown presented their central bargaining agenda to ETFO’s team on February 23. The tone established during previous meetings changed considerably when OPSBA tabled numerous disturbing concessionary demands. 

Those demands included:

· increased supervision time for teachers;

· no supervision time limits for daily OTs who are called in for assignments that are shorter than a full day;

· complete control by principals and school boards over the quantity and timing of diagnostic assessments – which would undermine the support for teacher professionalism and teacher judgement clearly expressed in the Ministry’s January 2013 document called PPM 155: Diagnostic Assessment in Support of Student Learning;

· the ability for principals to direct how teachers and long-term occasional teachers use their prep time;

· a requirement that ETFO endorse the revocation of Regulation 274 to the Ministry;

· the removal of all staffing and hiring language in local collective agreements;

· the removal of all class size language in local collective agreements;

· the removal of all entitlements in local collective agreements that are superior to central items;

· a written agreement from ETFO that the work day goes beyond the instructional day (i.e., teachers can be assigned teaching/non-teaching duties before, during and after school by their principal or school board);

· changes to sick leave provisions (90% coverage to 85%);

· provisions that allow principals and vice principals to return to teacher bargaining units and be placed in teaching positions ahead of surplus teachers and occasional teachers and with their seniority intact;

· DECEs may be assigned responsibilities outside FDK classrooms when the principal decides.
Monetary concessions demanded by OPSBA and the Crown included:
· 0% funding for compensation;

· the 97 day delay on salary grid movement would remain;

· the elimination of all degree and qualification-based allowance language (i.e., allowances for Masters degrees, PhDs, etc.) from local collective agreements;

· the elimination of all pregnancy and parental leave superior entitlements from local collective agreements.



The public school trustees have spoken!

COMMENTS: 

35 comments:

Anonymous said...

After reading this and the OECTA initial offer I feel sick. The fact that they would offer such demeaning things, such as the principal deciding what I do on my P&P or that my "day" goes beyond the instructional day, is an all time low. I realize they are probably doing this because in the end when I agree to a wage freeze they think I will feel lucky in the end. I won't though. What is happening now with these initial offers is that I no longer want to go out of my way for the government, the board or my principal. I will always be there for my students and will do everything I can in the classroom for them. I am not sure I have the will or want to do anything more.

Anonymous said...

Preview

Edit Anonymous said...
Haha this offer is a joke, this offer is at best an intimidating tactic, and at worst an attempt for forced labour, which in this part of the world illegal. Are they attempting to force extra curricular on us? If our work day goes beyond the school hours, does it mean they can make us come in at 6am.and leave after 7pm, and come in on the weekend? all for no pay? Once again, it will never work or legal.

Anonymous said...

Save ELMO!!!!! I hope poor Elmo has a fire retardant outfit on!
ELMO is the DANGER!

Anonymous said...

Could we have expected anything more from the same government that imposed strips on our contract in the last round of negotiations. What did we do? We voted them back in. I laugh because as I retire I watch so many young teachers have no clue or interest in their futures. It's the starbucks, SUV's and holidays in the present. Interesting to see the info released just as we head off to vacations. Sheep. all of us.

Anonymous said...

The MOE wasn't legal but was pushed thu What makes you think it is any different now?

Anonymous said...

Teachers make great pay and most make way less for more work. Public is against teachers. Imo. Police unions are only ones we need

Kulture Kult Ink said...

Thanks for the Comment! However, I'm not sure I follow. Why are police unions the only ones we need? Also, why aren't other workers making more, are losing their pensions, benefits etc, while the bankers and big corporate welfare bums are rolling in dough, the economic "crisis" notwithstanding. Aren't unions then the way to go then?

Please see my Oct 2014 "Why do we need teacher unions?" blog.

Thanks!

David C

Anonymous said...

Kathleen Wynne is the great Satan. You like her though dont you David. Notice how far away from all of this she is being kept??? hmm...........

Kulture Kult Ink said...

Wynne is leader of the OLP but that doesn't mean much. She is not the problem, the problems are systemic, she is just the face, a prog one at that, on many social issues, but not our union ones.

Plus truth be told, there is no opposition. The NDP long abandoned labour and didn't even make a pretense of it in the last election.

That said, OECTA is nicely centralizing everything now for the OLP to come along and snap it all up. Your next contract, after this one, will be a government pamphlet, maybe warning you about bathroom breaks. Too bad nobody seems to care.

Harris/ Eves/ Hudak were stupid to pick a fight with us. OLP does it with a happy face.

Will OECTA AGM vote in and acclaim the pro MOU'ers into exec this weekend sealing the affiliates fate? Seems so!

Cheers!

David C

Anonymous said...

Well David that is the darkest response I've ever read from you. Is there no hope?

Anonymous said...

David,
I am with you. It is a world wide rightist angle encouraged by those that own all the money and still don't have enough. Teacher Apathy does not help. They're all worried about being seen as pro union. If we don't have a choice then let's use that collective power. I am scared about what's going on at AGM too.

Kulture Kult Ink said...

Hello Is There No Hope!

It certainly is disconcerting to learn that the OECTA teacher union movement seems about to be subverted so decisively at AGM this weekend. This is an especially dark time
for any of us who have worked to build it up, especially over the Harris Years, hoping for better than that!

Democracy, free speech and the internet are works in progress tho. I remain committed to the principal of members being able to participate meaningfully in the management of their own union affairs, with access to open info and free speech.

An expert elite managing the membership herd with a narrowly and tightly controlled flow of information, right at the heart of our movement is very scary. It is quite systemic throughout society today. So I suppose it should come as no surprise that the same sort of manufacturing of consent for an elite coup is occurring in our parallel union structures. But methinks I'm getting a tad too philosophical here, seeking solstice with Chomsky and Che on my late night bed stand. ;-)

There certainly is lots to think and talk about but I will need to sleep on this one some more ......

Solidarity!

David C

Anonymous said...

In our last round of negotiations, I mean, imposed contracts ETFO kicked and screamed about how we were being abused. Eventually, we caved and accepted a brutal contract that gave away many things we had negotiated over the course of 30 years and more. This time around I guess we are accepting of the abuse because there is no kicking and screaming. Many victims of domestic abuse choose to stay because they have no alternative. Young teachers don't have a clue what we have and are giving away. I guess it's important to at least have a job and feel good about a purpose. Luckily, I will retire soon with most of the benefits intact- save for my gratuity. Young teachers are not seeing their future pensions and working conditions as they will be. Soon will come the time when you will have to ask the principal if you can use the bathroom. I smell a strike a la BC. It could get ugly.

Anonymous said...

Didnt come across the way i wanted.
Govts seem to want to tear down all Unions except cops! Need them to beat down agenda.

Anonymous said...

NDP has sadly become a party of intellectual retards.

Anonymous said...

David the subversion started last year all ready. In Halton, after what happened to our president, we had put in place resolutions to be put up for vote at AGM 2014. These would have taken a lot of power from GS and given COP and Provincial Exec more say.
Well...., acting president Nina (#1 traitor and GS's underling) called a General Meeting to which she invited provincial people and other Brock haters. They voted down all resolutions under Nina's/GS's direction. The local executive members left at that point were out voted: loss of power for Marshal suppressed. At AGM Nina got up and withdrew all of them on block. Any one against it was heckled by Gs supporters. At local meetings members were treated with blatant disrespect that would have been not allowed at AGM. Horst, James, Marshall and Nina allowed that behavior from members and Jarvis. One member known to be friends with Richard was told to F... off , others not allowed to speak, speaker did nothing. We asked James for help repeatedly: no answer.

Anonymous said...

Isn't that a growing Canadian malady?

Anonymous said...

The election of Ann Hawkins as OECTA president should fill ETFO and OSSTF members with dread. She was a strong supporter of the OECTA MOU, the contract that screwed over every teacher in Ontario and was part of Bill 115. She should have been booted out of office two years ago alongside OECTA president Kevin O'Dwyer or as we like to call him at ETFO Kevin O'Liar, the man who swore up and down in June 2013 ETFO was lying when it said OECTA had signed away the sick leave banks and retirement gratuities of its members in a deal with the government. A couple of weeks later - the OECTA MOU magically appears.

What did Mr. O'Liar get as his reward for destroying teacher contracts for his own members as well as for OSSTF and ETFO members? A cushy spot on staff at OECTA. Unbelievably, he is in the OECTA collective bargaining department now after proving in 2012 he can't bargain his way out of a paper bag!! Good for you Kev - screw your members, get a raise!

I predict that this OECTA strike vote is a smoke screen to lull the other unions into a false sense of security ("OECTA's seen the light now and is onside, isn't that great!"). Both ETFO and OSSTF have already taken strike votes and will do all the heavy lifting in April, May and June. They will take all the abuse from the public and all the stress from family and friends. Then, miraculously, OECTA will use the leverage other unions created to come up with a deal in early September 2015, just in time to prevent jittery OECTA members from losing one penny or one moment's grief on strike action or even work to rule. That deal will be full of strips and concessions no self-respecting intelligent union member could stomach. Then it will be imposed in some way on the rest of us.

There was a time when OECTA was a leader among teacher unions, when no government could push it around and get away with it. What the hell happened?

Anonymous said...

Brock was against the MOU. He and all his sympathizers had to be silenced or discredited. The tail is still wagging the dog at OECTA provincial and the president can't seem to get rid of part of the problem despite the constitution! The dictatorship still reigns and will do anything to maintain its position.

Kulture Kult Ink said...

Bizarre! Members are being rallied to fight for a status quo initial offer to help manufacture consent for a defacto secretariat coup at the OECTA offices. Singing Solidarity Forever as the MOE leaves AGM is bitter sweat. See my March 2012 archives. The OECTA AGM did that then too just before the July 5 surprise MOU was signed!!!!

You can read the posts where OECTA outright denied that an secret deal was pending, when in fact it was. That's in the June 2012 teacher free speech!

Thucydides 500 BC: Those who forget their history are doomed to repeat it! Indeed!

Kulture Kult Ink said...

PS Hi Natalie! Thanks for following!

Kulture Kult Ink said...

Quite a few OECTA Cease + Desist letters are currently going out to any and all dissidents too. Seems OECTA likes to make martyrs to the cause little remembering how Christianity triumphed.

Anonymous said...

Hello David,

OSSTF announced yesterday during AMPA that 7 school boards would go on strike by the end of April the latest if no real gains happen during negotiations. Way to go OSSTF! Enough is enough on the attacks on the teaching profession on all fronts!

http://www.osstf.on.ca/en-CA/news/MN-Mar-14-2015

Anonymous said...

Kevin O'Dwyer is only making $ 270,000 plus ridiculous benefits. His reward is considerable for such a "great" MOU deal in 2012 (for the government).. Maybe he can make it $300,000 or double that when he gives away the little that remains in teachers' contracts this 2015 round! The members don't seem to mind financing Kevin and the other liabilities in OECTA at all! The Rand Formula should be abolished and union membership should be voluntary. Then union "leaders" might be forced to perform for the rights and interests of union members rather than for themselves!

Anonymous said...

No-one in OECTA makes anything close to $270 K. The OECTASA collective agreement is available via the OLRB website.

Anonymous said...

What is your take on why OPSbA wants a return of Admin to the bargaining unit? Is this just an easy item to concede on to look as though bargaining is a give And take process? Interested in your perspective...

Anonymous said...

OPSBA wants Principals to be able to return to the bargaining unit because OPC (Ontario's Principals Council) is demanding it. OPC knows that the government intends to close 500 schools and consequently there will be a loss of 700 plus Principals and VP's in the province. If they have rights to return to teaching with super seniority they will push out the equivalent number of teachers and current members of OSSTF and ETFO. Currently with Reg 274 still in place these redundant administrators would have to become OT's and work there way up if they wanted to remain in teaching. In addition OPSBA wants more Principals in the positions currently held by consultants who are members of the teacher unions. These demands should not be considered an easy give...they are serious strips!! What needs to happen is that teaching Principals and VP's need to eliminated from being able to teach as they are currently taking up hundreds of bargaining unit positions across the province...management should not be allowed to jobs that belong to the bargaining unit.

Kulture Kult Ink said...

Thanks for this!

Anonymous said...

How about removing them from the teachers pension plan also? They are not teachers.

Anonymous said...

If they are paying +12% of their salary into the pension plan like all other teachers why should they be excluded? Fairness works?

Anonymous said...

Are other non teaching staff in the teachers pension plan? Just wondering as I don't know. Secretaries, Board HR staff etc?

Kulture Kult Ink said...

Mike Harris removed principals and VPs from our teacher unions in the late 1990's. The collegilaity principle definately suffered in our schools as a result. Principals became managers. From a CB perspective, they always did better than us, tho a part of the union, which was awkward. I'd suspect they were better off then. Would we want them back? Should they be eligable to contribute to our pension plan? My own feelings are pretty mixed. Will leave this for you to hash out ......

Anonymous said...

We might want to have them back as they have leadership qualities which seem to be severely lacking in OECTA. Hopefully some of them also have integrity!

Anonymous said...

ETFO has announced they filed for conciliation yesterday (March 31st). Early May in legal position to strike. Our leadership better have the spine to go the distance this time!!!

Unknown said...

They want to make sure we can never halt doing extra curricular actvities again In protest.

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