An ultimatum from the Ontario Minister of Education isn’t the way to earn a long-term collective agreement according to Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario president David Clegg.
The “ultimatum” he’s referring to is, according to the Ministry of Education, a voluntary deadline to sign a provincial framework agreement and work out long-term collective agreements locally.
Essentially, the ministry is acting as a facilitator for discussions between trustee associations, teacher federations and unions representing education support workers to work out province-wide issues to facilitate local contract bargaining.
The provincial framework agreements include salary increases of three per cent for each of the next four years compounding to 12.55 per cent, according to their website. As well, the agreements include funding provisions for additional teachers for targeted class size reductions in grades four to eight, literacy and numeracy coaches in grades seven and eight and additional arts and specialist teachers.
More provisions for support workers are also included. All funding promised in the provincial level agreements goes to the local board.
These framework agreements, once signed are not staff contracts; those must be negotiated locally through the various school boards, such as the Bluewater District School Board. Once a federation or association has approved of the framework agreements, they promise to work toward a new collective agreement locally by November 30.
The collective agreements reached are to reflect the provisions of the provincial agreement and are not to expire until August 31, 2012.
Education Minister Kathleen Wynne said in a statement that four-year collective agreements, such as the ones they were trying to facilitate in the province would deliver “peace and progress with improved student achievement.” She added that the ministry would keep working with education partners to achieve four more years of the same.
“But we believe that the people of Ontario understand that can’t come at any cost,” she said.
Minister Wynne announced in September that any organization that does not enter a voluntary provincial framework agreement and locally ratify collective agreements by November 30 will not be eligible for the provincial funding agreed upon in the agreements. Instead, the province will cut the salary provision to a four per cent raise over two years.
The Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario (ETFO), representing 73,000 teachers across the province left the provincial discussion table in May of this year and has not returned. They don’t think the framework agreements are good enough.
Clegg toured the province to spread the word about the new ETFO campaign to close what he says is a $711 gap between elementary student and secondary student funding.
He stopped in Owen Sound and Chesley to address the Bluewater District School Board area on Thursday, November 20.
“The deadline is an artificial one, it’s not helpful,” he said. “Ultimately, if you are trying to establish a long term agreement with the complexity this one will obviously have, you need to have some patience.”
He maintained that the salary portion of the framework agreement is reasonable, but their plans to close the gap did not follow an acceptable timetable.
He calculated that according to the provisions in the agreement, it would take 21 years for elementary specialized teaching to be at par with secondary and 30 years for grade four to eight class sizes to be the same as secondary classes. Currently, Jr. Intermediate class sizes are about 25 students to one teacher. The ETFO wants to see that number brought down to 22.
“Salary is not the issue and has never been the issue. The real issue is fairness,” said Clegg in a statement. “When we were involved in provincial level talks earlier in the year, what was offered to elementary teachers fell very far short of what is needed to close the gap.”
According to Patricia MacNeil, senior media relations coordinator at the ministry of education, the funding formulas, also called Grants for Student Needs, for Ontario students are not calculated along elementary and secondary panels and are instead provided to boards with the flexibility to account for the unique circumstances – rural, urban, declining enrollment, large geographical area, etc – that each board operates in.
She adds that there are other grants for student funding through programs by the ministry’s Literacy and Numeracy Secretariat, which are directed exclusively to elementary boards.
“Also, there is no gap in student services,” she said. “For example, the average class size in K-8 last year was 22:1 versus the funded average for a secondary class size of 22 students. The ratio of students per adult was the same in both panels: 10.9:1.”
The Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation has signed a framework agreement for their support worker’s units, but left the provincial discussion table without signing an agreement for their English secondary teachers. The OSSTF teachers returned recently to re-engage in the provincial discussion tables.
“Staff from the Minister's office and the ministry will continue to facilitate that discussion and staff are confident English secondary students and boards can reach a common understanding that is in the best interest of students,” said MacNeil.
Catholic and French teachers have already signed the provincial framework agreement.
The Bluewater District School Board has ratified long-term collective agreements for all their support staff. Clegg said local negotiations for Bluewater would begin in December, after the deadline for provincial framework agreements. There’s no word yet on local talks with secondary school teachers.
“We’re hoping that come Dec. 1 the government will realize issuing an ultimatum is not the way to resolve problems of this nature and that they’ll make a commitment to eliminate the funding gap over a number of years,” said Clegg.
If the province does not make a commitment that the ETFO finds reasonable and indeed withdraws their funding as promised in the ultimatum, Clegg says the government “will not get a collective agreement with the elementary teachers in the province.”
“If the government believes that the future economically is so uncertain that they cant make a commitment, then equally they should not expect us to make that type of commitment,” he said. “But lets be clear it’s very obvious why the government wants the long term collective agreement – it gets them past the next provincial election.”
A strike is not in the bargaining cards yet, according to Clegg, who said they haven’t contemplated it and have not suggested they were going to take strike votes.
“It’s always an option that’s out there,” he said. “But not one that we’re exploring.”
No comments:
Post a Comment