Month: April 2014

Tim Hudak’s low-wage agenda is hiding in plain sight

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20121106-DemocraticRights-Web-TBayOntario PC leader Tim Hudak’s dropping of ‘right-to-work’ leaves the door open to pushing an anti-worker agenda by other means, says the head of the Ontario Federation of Labour.

By: Sid Ryan Published on Tue Mar 04 2014. Click here to view the original.

Tim Hudak’s alleged reversal of his controversial support for American-style “right-to-work” laws lacks all credibility. It is the sort of cagey claim that is reminiscent of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford’s now notorious statement: “I do not use crack cocaine, nor am I an addict of crack cocaine.” Of course, Mayor Ford was intentionally deceiving voters about his drug habits, while the truth fell somewhere between the questions reporters asked and the careful wording of Ford’s qualified answer.

On Feb. 21, Hudak, the leader of Ontario’s Progressive Conservatives, promised the Toronto business community that his party would not “change the so-called Rand Formula” that protects union dues collection and guarantees union resources for representing their members. The media eagerly reported that Hudak had “reversed his position,” “flip-flopped,” done a “U-turn” or “bowed to unions,” but nothing could be further from the truth. Like Mayor Ford, the reality of Mr. Hudak’s intentions lies in what he didn’t say. His promise comes with a wink and a nudge.

Let’s be clear: overturning Justice Ivan Rand’s 1946 decision was never explicitly part of Hudak’s message because, as he ominously boasted to his business audience, “Our agenda is a lot bigger, and a lot more ambitious, than that.” So, his pledge not to undo this foundational labour policy is neither a retraction nor a reassurance. It intentionally leaves the door wide open to accomplish his anti-worker agenda through a variety of other means.

For 18 months, Hudak’s Tories have been promising to import the meanest, most divisive anti-worker laws that the United States has to offer. While he has cloaked his strategy with murky and misleading doublespeak about the need for “flexible labour markets” and “labour law modernization,” Hudak’s intensions have always been clear: eliminate the organized opposition of workers and implement a low-wage, regulation-free haven where corporations can rake in profit at the expense of Ontario workers, communities and the environment.

Even if workers were to mistakenly believe Hudak’s pledge to not tear up the Rand Formula, they most certainly cannot trust him to leave workers’ rights intact. Hudak’s party has promised to make it more difficult to join a union and possible for individual workers to opt-out of their collective agreement. These measures would divide workplaces and have the net effect of gutting the entire basis of the Rand Formula, while allowing him to remain true to his word.

Hudak has also made clear that he would take his anti-labour agenda much, much further. He has promised to freeze public sector wages, gut pensions for public sector workers and reduce public services through staff reductions that would hit schools and hospitals.

He would follow Alberta Premier Alison Redford in removing the third-party arbitration system that supports fair collective bargaining for front line emergency personnel who do not have the right to strike, like police and fire fighters. He would curtail workers’ from using union dues for workplace training and he would silence his opposition by restricting unions from engaging in political advocacy.

These measures would draw Ontario into a race to the bottom led by America’s 24 right-to-work states that now boast some of the lowest wages in the land. It is an agenda that no Ontario worker can afford and a scheme that would not only divide workplaces and communities, but has already divided the Tory party itself.

If there is anything to be learned from the American example, it is that the advocates of these extremist policies do not waiver or retreat from their low-wage agenda. They view economic re-engineering as a game of chess and if public outcry prevents them from doing it in one move, they will try it in three.

Hudak’s scheme is cribbed right out of the Republican playbook and just like Mayor Ford, he certainly won’t let the truth get in his way.

Sid Ryan is president of the Ontario Federation of Labour.

         —             COPE 343

CUPE 3205 needs your support

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Food Service workers at Trent University need our help!
The CUPE Peterborough Area Office is asking for your support to message Trent University by clicking on the tab below.
Please forward to your membership and other supporters.
In Solidarity,
Grant Darling

Trent University
Support Food Service Workers
Your immediate help is needed. In less than two weeks Compass Group Canada is set to take over food services at Trent University.

Despite initial assurances by the University that the new company would respect the current collective agreement, CUPE has now learned that Trent’s Food Service Workers are being asked to take drastic cuts to their already modest rights, wages, benefits and working conditions.

Please support Trent’s food service workers by clicking this link<http://cupe.us7.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=156003c53a9d3962e31946813&id=6566a256cb&e=543041b1de> to send an automatic e-mail to Trent University’s president to demonstrate your concerns and demand they take action.

Also, please share with all your contacts and ask them to do the same.

Time is of the essence – your help will make a big difference.

Click Here to send your message<http://cupe.us7.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=156003c53a9d3962e31946813&id=7893b95209&e=543041b1de>ing

 

 

Full-day kindergarten: beyond test scores

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The Globe and Mail
Thu Apr 3 2014
Byline: Erin Anderssen
eanderssen@globeandmail.com

There are a lot of people disappointed with the results of Ontario’s full- day kindergarten program. According to a just-published study that compared the students in the first three years of the program, it hasn’t translated so far into better scores in reading or math at the end of Grade 1. The kids aren’t doing worse, but academic benefits are what everyone has focused on, because that’s largely how the $5-billion-a-year program was sold by the Liberal government. (Even the author of the study, Janette Pelletier, a child development expert at Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, says that the “fade-out” early learning measurements was a surprise.) Critics who call it “expensive babysitting” and think little kids should be at home more (a tricky feat when so many of their parents are working), are full of “I told you so’s.”

But hold on. It’s true that full-day kindergarten has not – at least not yet, anyway – transformed the province’s youngest scholars when it comes to early reading and writing scores, as a story by my colleague Caroline Alphonso pointed out last week. But the study suggested that kids maintained an advantage in other social and cognitive areas essential for school success. Their parents were also less stressed, and, in surveys, reported improvements in their kids on nearly every early learning measurement. All of which raise some important questions about the program that go beyond test scores:

1. Isn’t reducing family stress a legitimate reason for a social program?

The study conducted a “parental hassle survey” and found that parents were significantly “less hassled” if their kids were in full-day-kindergarten – which will comes as no surprise to any family that has tried to juggle half-day school with full-time work. Household stress also has a negative effect on long- term student achievement – to say nothing of the health of families in general, and the benefit that comes from facilitating work, especially for low-income parents and single moms, who have struggled most with child-care costs and logistics. What’s more, parents are happy with the program and report seeing a benefit in their children. Why aren’t these results seen as equally valuable to, say, boosting results on standardized tests?

2. What is happening in Grade One?

By almost every social and cognitive measure, the full-day kids had an edge over their half-day peers going into Grade One – but lost that advantage by the end of the year. Researchers are not yet sure why this is but some suggest that the more formal teaching structure in first grade may not be capitalizing on the benefits of play-based learning – something many educators hope will change over time.

3. What measurements really matter for future academic success?

Students in full-day kindergarten significantly outscored their half-day peers in two important areas: vocabulary and self regulation, which includes the ability to focus, follow instructions and co-operate with peers. Those gains held up through Grade 1, and, some research suggests, in the long run have a larger effect on adult outcomes. (Another plus: The more kids who arrive to class with these skills, the better the learning environment is for everyone. )

4. Now that we have a benchmark, how can we improve the program?

It’s hardly realistic to expect an education change requiring a huge cultural and curriculum shift for teachers, and major school reorganization, to transform student outcomes from day one. “It would be naive to expect a new approach to work on every dimension right away, and there is always room for improvement,” says Pelletier. What’s clear in the study is that some significant kinks still need to be worked out. In particularly, some classrooms have too many students.

There’s a shortage of early childhood educators, which means, according to Kerry McCuaig, an early childhood researcher also at OISE, that sometimes principals have to pitch in to cover absences. Co-operation between teachers and the ECEs now sharing their classrooms continues to be an issue. These are problems, however, that will take time to fix.

Even so, we would be wrong to expect that full-day kindergarten will fix all problems for every child, and perhaps both experts and politicians should have been more cautious about overselling it, especially at the beginning. A universal system offered to all families will not produce the same results as the targeted, specially designed interventions for disadvantaged children often cited in U.S. studies. Sweden took decades to create a preschool system that earns praises around the world (hopefully, we can learn from them and go faster). Given the size of the investment, we need to ask critical questions about the program without making hasty leaps. Ideally, ongoing research will reveal how we can make improvements, not just to the kindergarten program, but the next grades as well. For now, at least one group appears happy to reward the program an A-plus: the families actually using it.

(c) 2014 The Globe and Mail Inc. All Rights Reserved.