Teacher strikes: Are they illegal? Durham, Peel, Sudbury boards file labour relations board case
The Ontario Labour Relations Board is being asked to rule if the strikes by high school teachers in three boards are legal.

By: Kristin Rushowy Education Reporter,
Published on Tue May 12 2015

Three public boards hit by strikes by high school teachers are now striking back – calling the job action unlawful and launching a case with the Ontario Labour Relations Board to get students back to class.

“We’re calling on the OLRB to rule that the secondary teachers’ waged an unlawful strike to put pressure on the provincial negotiations” which is not allowed under new bargaining legislation, said Janet McDougald, chair of the Peel District School Board.

“This ruling would return Peel, Durham and Rainbow (Sudbury) students to their classrooms, where we know they can finish off the school year positively, without further disruption,” she said in a written release.

Teachers in Peel walked off the job last week, and those in Rainbow/Sudbury two weeks ago. Durham teachers, now in their fourth week of a strike, hit the picket lines April 20.

This round of bargaining, under new legislation, has the government, school boards’ associations and provincial unions bargaining centrally on costly items such as class size or salary, with union locals and school boards hammering out non-monetary items.”We’ve said, from the beginning, what we know is true: that provincial OSSTF (high school teachers’ union) is setting the agenda for local bargaining and that this local strike is part of their overall provincial strategy,” added McDougald.

“We’ve seen secondary teachers in each of the three boards protest issues being negotiated at the central table, particularly the central matter of class size. Our teachers need to know, and our parents and students need to know, that there is nothing we can do at our local table to impact class size decisions – nothing.”

Supervision and teacher autonomy have also been mentioned as strike issues, she added, and again they are to be dealt with centrally.

However, local union leaders have cited issues ranging from performance appraisals to personnel files as the reasons behind the strikes.

“If something is not dealt with over a period of 10 to 15 years, it’s a problem – especially around evaluations, and especially if they determine if someone is going to have a job or not have a job,” Paul Elliott, president of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation, or OSSTF, has told the Star.

No central bargaining talks took place on Tuesday, amid the strikes and as province’s public elementary educators continue their work-to-rule.

The Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario had briefly returned to central negotiations on Monday, but left talks an hour later saying the government and school boards’ had not changed their offer.

On Monday, elementary teachers also launched job action, refusing to take part in standardized testing in any way or prepare comments for June report cards.

School boards are saying it will be near impossible to run the yearly EQAO tests, which are administered later this month.

The head of the EQAO (Education Quality and Accountability Office) says unless there is a strike, boards should proceed but the CEO acknowledged it will be “very difficult” without the co-operation of teachers.

“We’ll need to wait to see what happens,” said Bruce Rodrigues. However, he added, “we are expecting that on May 25, they should be ready to write.”

The tests given to students Grades 3 and 6 in reading, writing and math, consist of six, one-hour sessions that usually stretch over three days. They are scheduled to be held anytime between May 25 to June 5.

“Administratively, I don’t know how to do it” without teachers, said Michael Barrett, president of the Ontario Public School Boards’ Association, adding that if cancelled, tracking student progress over the years will be affected.

Classroom teachers in Grades 3 and 6 prepare students for the tests and administer them, while other teachers are hired to mark them – all things they’ve been instructed by their union not to do.

(Grade 9 math assessment is to go ahead in all schools from May 28 to June 12, except in boards where secondary teachers are on strike. Grade 10 students wrote the mandatory literacy test back in March.)

This round of bargaining , driven by new legislation, has the provincial school boards’ associations, unions and the Ministry of Education trying to settle the big-money issues with individual school boards and union districts negotiating local items.

Hammond has said the union won’t accept changes proposed by the government and school boards’ regarding class size, control of prep time and a new hiring policy.

He has also said while pay is not a key issue, he will be seeking a raise because of cost-of-living increases.

Both Wynne and Education Minister Liz Sandals have repeatedly said there is no money for salary increases unless savings are found elsewhere.

Barrett, who is also chair of the Durham board, said the strike there is now in its fourth week and concerns are growing that the year could be lost.

At Queen’s Park, Sandals said she too is worried but noted none of the boards involved has applied to the Education Relations Commission to rule if the academic year is in jeopardy.

Local talks in Durham were held on Friday with the high school teachers’ union District 13, and future dates are expected. Peel is also expected to be back at the local bargaining table on Wednesday.

———————-
ETFO Statement Regarding Central Table Bargaining

May 11, 2015

Here is a statement from Sam Hammond, President of the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario.

“The Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario returned to the central bargaining table this morning at the mediator’s request. It was our expectation that the government and the Ontario Public School Board Association (OPSBA) would remove concessions from the table. That did not happen and the meeting ended at 11:00 a.m.”

“ETFO will continue phase one of its work-to-rule strike action. In order for real progress to be made at the central table, OPSBA and the Liberal government need to reconsider their concession-based approach to central bargaining.”

“When these concessions were initially tabled, OPSBA and the government stated that they were ‘opening positions’ only. ETFO would like to move beyond opening positions to meaningful bargaining.”

ETFO’s 73,000 teacher and occasional teacher members will remain in schools to carry out their instructional duties with students, provide extra help to students and maintain contact with parents. Teacher voluntary extra-curricular activities and scheduled field trips will continue for the duration of the phase 1 work-to-rule. The strike action is incremental in nature and will continue until bargaining issues are resolved or ETFO deems further actions are required.

The Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario represents 76,000 elementary public school teachers, occasional teachers and education professionals across the province.

Hydro One privatization will hurt schools
Guelph Mercury
Tue May 12 2015
Byline: Misty Gagne

“The privatization of Hydro One will further exacerbate already underfunded school board budgets.”

I couldn’t agree more with that statement. The sale of Hydro One will mean rising rates as private corporations demand larger profits.

You don’t have to take my word for it, either. That quote came from the lips of Liz Sandals, now Guelph’s MPP and the province’s Minister of Education. It was made in 2002 during a presentation to a government panel holding hearings into the sale of Hydro One in 2002, when she was president of the Ontario Public School Boards’ Association.

Sandals very articulately laid out the argument against hydro privatization, and as an MPP and education minister, I hope she remembers the truth in what she said.

She argued Hydro One should not be sold because private investors will expect profits from the company that will drive hydro rates up. That would translate into a real hit for schools across the province as they struggle to find the cash for higher hydro rates from already overstretched budgets, she argued. A private investor also won’t want to sink money into necessary hydro infrastructure improvements, she said.

Well, today we’re in a situation where program budgets for schools, as well as for health care and almost every public service, have been kept below the rate of inflation and population growth for years. Ontario spends less on public service programs than other provinces. The government is already forcing school and hospital closures across the province. We’ve seen the death toll from a cost-cutting privatization of snow clearing on provincial highways.

The government has said they plan to keep a minority 40 per cent stake in Hydro One, but the legislation they introduced anticipates what will happen when government ownership falls below 10 per cent. That says to me they have a long-term vision of a complete privatization of our provincial electrical transmission and distribution infrastructure.

How will this privatization and the rising rates be any different from what Sandals foresaw 13 years ago?

The simple truth is, it won’t be.

Experience in Ontario and around the world says so. Our electrical system will become less reliable. We will lose local control over a vital public service. Rates will go up, and schools, hospitals and other public services we rely on will have to cut millions of dollars more from front-line services to pay for rising demands for profit from Hydro One’s new corporate owners.

Liz Sandals was right in 2002. I encourage our MPP to fight the Hydro One sale in caucus and in public, and to do the right thing and vote against it in the Ontario legislature.

(c) 2015 Torstar Corporation

Striking Durham high school teachers gain support from CUPE Ontario

CUPE Ontario donates $5,000 to teachers’ union in Oshawa

Ontario Catholic teachers vote to strike

BY KEVIN CONNOR, TORONTO SUN

FIRST POSTED: SATURDAY, APRIL 25, 2015 05:08 PM EDT

The National Post is reporting that the minister of education states that central (provincial) table negotiations between OSSTF and the government resumed this morning.  (I think they mean between OSSTF and OPSBA, but the article says between OSSTF and the government.)

http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/canadian-politics/central-negotiations-resume-as-high-school-teachers-in-one-ontario-board-walked-off-the-job-monday

Paul O’Donnell
Senior Research Officer
Canadian Union of Public Employees
1375 St. Laurent
Ottawa, Ontario K1G 0Z7
Tel: (613) 237-1590 X 227
Fax: (613) 237-5508
podonnell@cupe.ca

Durham teachers strike could unleash wave of labour unrest; Six more school boards targeted as unions grow increasingly frustrated at bargaining table
Toronto Star
Mon Apr 20 2015
Byline: Kristin Rushowy Toronto Star

Durham public high school teachers will hit the picket lines on Monday in a protest widely seen as the start of a wave of teacher unrest across the province, with six more boards targeted in the coming weeks and other unions growing increasingly frustrated at the bargaining table.

“There’s an intensity of emotions with regard to the issues . . . and there’s a definite philosophical divide that could very well prolong this action,” said Michael Barrett, president of the Ontario Public School Boards’ Association and chair of the Durham District School Board. “I’m not sure at this point, based upon the conversations that have been going on at the provincial table,” whether a deal can be soon reached, he said. “When there’s no light at the tunnel, it’s tough to see out of the darkness.”

On the weekend, the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation formally ended all talks at the provincial level, and had previously accused the government and school boards’ association of not bargaining seriously, seeking “strips” or clawbacks to previously won gains. Those include bigger class sizes, more out-of-class supervision time, as well as a demand for an unpaid day off and a slower movement up the salary grid.

But in the past, the school boards were vocal about their opposition to a number of rules imposed on them during the last round of bargaining, including a regulation that forces principals to hire long-term supply teachers based on seniority rather than fitness for the job, as well as allowing teachers to decide which diagnostic tests to use on students, arguing there would be no consistency from year to year.

Earlier last month, the Ontario English Catholic Teachers Association, which is holding strike votes this week, opposed any clawback, saying it was a blow to teacher professionalism.

For the first time, the province, school board associations and teacher unions are bargaining under new legislation where costly items such as salaries and benefits are settled at the provincial table, while school boards and union districts negotiate local deals on items specific to each.

The new system was supposed to help avoid labour chaos, after the 2012-13 school year that saw teacher walkouts and work-to-rule campaigns to protest a contract being imposed on teachers.

While some bargaining did eventually take place, neither unions nor the school boards were happy with the process.

Although the complexity of the new system can be blamed for some of the delay, teachers have been without a contract since last August and the union is now putting pressure on the provincial talks with local strike action, which could hit Peel, Halton, Sudbury, Thunder Bay, Ottawa and Waterloo in short order.

Other insiders say that despite the government being seen as education friendly, no one should rule out broader job action come this fall, involving all teacher unions, should provincial talks continue at such a slow pace.

The government has been clear there’s no money for salary increases unless teachers give up something to cover the cost.

“Our government remains committed to a respectful bargaining process that is in line with our fiscal plan and continues to support student achievement,” Education Minister Liz Sandals said in a statement Sunday, adding it was “disappointing that local talks between OSSTF and the Durham District School Board have broken down.”

Students in Durham also weighed in on the weekend, appealing to all three sides to come to a resolution as soon as possible to avoid a strike.

“Believe it or not, we want to stay in school. We want to keep learning, earning those credits and we want to graduate,” says a letter that student leaders at Pickering’s Pine Ridge Secondary School sent to the school board, the OSSTF, Premier Kathleen Wynne and Sandals.

Cameron Penn, a Grade 12 student leader bound for the University of Ottawa in the fall, is concerned, like many of his peers, that a strike could require time lost to be made up in the summer, possibly resulting in the loss of summer jobs.

“Another thing is all our students worked very hard to plan numerous events for our school, which could be cancelled,” he says. “All these events that students worked on, for our community and for charities, could be cancelled and that would be a tragedy.” Penn, 17, says historically, labour disputes have left students feeling ignored and used for leverage. “We believe the whole point is to educate the students, and the fact that no one was asking us how we felt, we sort of felt left behind,” he says. “We know that you care about the students, so it’s time to show it,” says the letter. “There are no reasons which justify the interruption of our education.”

But Barrett said the last decade of contract negotiations has been difficult, and that the last time around, when some conditions were imposed on teachers and boards, “nobody was happy … there were certain frameworks in that agreement that were not acceptable to the school boards. Certainly, we’re looking for adjustments to some of those elements we were never quite happy about.”

And while he agreed the new system is complex, he acknowledged that a recent pay increase for Toronto police – which raised eyebrows among many teachers who expressed their displeasure on social media – has not helped matters.

The four-year police contract, overwhelmingly ratified by members of the Toronto Police Association last week, includes a cumulative pay increase of 8.64 per cent.
“It’s very, very difficult to take the premise of fiscal responsibility and then expect it to be at the hands of a few … (the police raise) was a very difficult premise to swallow and I understand the angst.”

Paul Axelrod, a professor in the faculty of education at York University, agreed.

“The imposition of salary freezes by the province, and the apparent desire to remove class size ceilings in a time when the government appears to have spent irresponsibly on e-health, ORNGE, and the power plants – these issues have not been forgotten despite the last election – means that employees in the public sector, like teachers, are not likely to be passive in current and upcoming negotiations,” he said.

“Clearly, the large provincial deficit hovers over all of this, but government is still spending in selected areas. The sector is asking why education shouldn’t be one of these priorities.

“I think it will be tough going in the coming months.”

With files from Tamara Khandaker

(c) 2015 Torstar Corporation

Ontario moves to fast-track process to close ‘underutilized’ schools

The Globe and Mail

Mon Apr 6 2015

Byline: KAREN HOWLETT

The Ontario government is speeding up the process for closing schools, as part of a crackdown on publicly funded boards with too many classrooms sitting empty.

Several boards are grappling with declining enrolment across Ontario, where about 600 schools, or one in eight, are less than half full, according to the Education Ministry. School boards spend $1-billion a year, 5 per cent of their provincial operating budgets, on buildings with an excess of empty space. They are coming under renewed pressure to address the financial drain, with Education Minister Liz Sandals saying the money should be used instead for student programs.

Her ministry defines schools less than two-thirds full as “underutilized” – candidates for closing or changes to their boundaries or programs they offer. The ministry unveiled new guidelines 10 days ago for community consultations that must take place before a school can be closed. But critics say the guidelines limit public engagement and make it easier to close schools.

A committee reviewing the fate of a school is required to hold two public meetings instead of four under the new regime, and the time frame for conducting a review is cut to five months from seven. Another major change causing considerable angst for municipal officials is a shift in emphasis toward student achievement and away from considering the impact of closing a school on a community and local economy.

Doug Reycraft, chair of the Community Schools Alliance, a not-for-profit that strives to work with the ministry, municipalities and boards, said holding only two open meetings over a shorter time period leads one to conclude that public input is not important.

“These changes are really just a recipe for an avalanche of closures across the province,” Mr. Reycraft said.

“To take the existing process and make it tighter is just an affront to democracy.”

Monika Turner, director of policy at the Association of Municipalities of Ontario, said focusing the review process more narrowly on the interests of students might help school boards solve their fiscal challenges. But it comes, she said, at the expense of the longer-term interests of a community, including the impact closing a school could have on residential real estate values.

“A school is the hub of a community,” Ms. Turner said.

“When you close a school, that community has lost a draw for anybody to ever come back.”

The new process gives municipal governments a formal role for the first time, providing an opportunity for school boards to collaborate with municipalities in making the best use of school space.

“Ultimately, we actually want the school boards and the municipalities to have an ongoing relationship where [they] are sharing their planning data so that the municipalities are aware of where there are clusters of underutilized schools,” Ms. Sandals said in a recent interview.

Earlier this year, she forced the Toronto District School Board to come up with a plan to reduce its underutilized space, which does not include classrooms used for adult education, English as a second language or community programs.

One in five schools at the board falls within the threshold. Trustees agreed in February to conduct community reviews on a total of 68 schools over the next three years.

Under the new guidelines, the review committee acts as a conduit for sharing information between school-board trustees and the community. However, the power to close a school rests solely with the board of trustees. Committee members do not get to vote on whether to close a school.

Michael Barrett, president of the Ontario Public School Boards’ Association, said in many heavily contested cases in the past, it was often a municipality that was fighting to prevent a school from closing.

“Everybody wants the school to remain open,” he said.

“But nobody wants to pay for it.”

© 2015 The Globe and Mail Inc. All Rights Reserved.

School funding continues to leave students behind

TORONTO, ON – Public school funding announced today by the Ministry of Education will leave students behind and speed up the closure of schools across Ontario, says Fred Hahn, President of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Ontario.

“The minister said she wants to support student achievement and well-being, but her announcement makes it clear the government is ramping up its effort to force potentially hundreds of school closures across the province,” says Hahn. “Taking kids out of their local schools, which are the hearts of their communities, hurts student well-being. Forcing kids in rural communities to endure ever longer bus rides because of school closures will impact student achievement. The government is making these short-sighted decisions based on deeply flawed utilization numbers, and Ontario’s students deserve better.”

The education ministry’s funding is based on a formula for “utilization” rates in schools. A recent report from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives shows the funding formula is deeply flawed and the ministry is not accounting for a number of key uses of school space. Today’s announcement included another push to close schools across Ontario by the Minister, even though the government just announced it will be consulting on the use of schools as community hubs.

“How can you say you’re committed to consultations on community hubs while you’re aggressively closing the very buildings that would house those hubs,” said Hahn. “That makes no sense.”

Today’s release by the Ministry of Education of the Grants for Student Needs also failed to address chronic underfunding of special education. In fact, it will mean less special education funding for 38 school boards.

“Almost 80 percent of school boards already have to spend more on special education than the ministry provides. Despite this board-level commitment, students and families continue to wait years for support. Many students with learning disabilities never get the support they need,” said Terri Preston, chair of CUPE Ontario’s School Board Workers Coordinating Committee. “Let’s be honest, this continued shortfall in provincial funding is hurting student achievement.”

CUPE Ontario will continue its call for a moratorium on school closures until there is a full public consultation and review of the funding formula. It will also continue working with coalition partners to ensure the ministry provides adequate funding for special education.

“Investing in public education builds a better Ontario for future generations,” said Preston. “Our members are standing up and demanding our schools receive the provincial funding they need so students can succeed and we can maintain these valuable public assets in our communities.”

CUPE is Ontario’s community union, with members providing quality public services we all rely on, in every part of the province, every day. CUPE Ontario members are proud to work in social services, health care, municipalities, school boards, universities and airlines.

-30-

For further information:
Craig Saunders, CUPE Communications, 416-576-7316