Contract talks with the unions representing the 3,000 teachers of the Upper Grand District School Board (UGDSB) will continue despite a statement from Education Minister Laurel Broten that the government will step in if school boards fail to reach agreements by Aug. 31.
Board chairman Bob Borden said Broten’s comments earlier this week, viewed by some as veiled threats, will not stop talks between the board’s elementary and high school teachers, which have yet to be set.
Borden said a timeline for talks with the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario and the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation still have to be agreed upon.
“It’s a little frustrating because this is totally out of the normal process,” Borden said on Tuesday of Broten’s comments the previous day.
“It’s like coming to the negotiation table with a gun to your head.”
Broten warned school boards that agreements have to be in place by Aug. 31 to circumvent a process where teacher contracts will “roll over” if a new agreement is not in place.
After five months of negotiations, and with a month left before contracts are set to automatically “rollover,” Ontario is calling on school board trustees to negotiate and sign local agreements before teacher and support staff contracts expire.
An automatic “rollover” would lead to salary increases of 5.5 per cent for many teachers and result in the accumulation of two million more teacher sick days that could be cashed out at retirement.
Borden said the board is already in a difficult situation because money provided by the ministry for teacher salaries is less than what the board would have to pay out should the contracts be rolled over.
Normally, if the deadline passes the existing contracts are renewed, but if that happens, the board would be short “millions of dollars,” Borden said.
“We were not given enough money.”Borden said with teachers on summer vacation it has been difficult to get the sides together to determine when talks will start.
“We’ve just agreed we’re going to carry on as normal,” he added. “We’re going to invite the unions to negotiate. It’s in our best interest to follow a normal, rational procedure. The existing program stays in place. It’s in our interest to continue to negotiate.”
The Ontario government has stated it will use legislation in contract talks with the province’s teachers if school boards are “unwilling or unable” to negotiate agreements by Aug. 31.
Broten would not comment on what type of legislation the government was considering to keep teachers in the classroom.
The Conservatives and the NDP have indicated they will not support any legislation brought in by the minority Liberals.
New Democratic MPP Cheri DiNovo accused the government of walking away from the collective bargaining process.
“The language she’s using sounds more like Harris than like someone who supports collective bargaining,” DiNovo told reporters, referring to labour strife in Ontario under former Progressive Conservative premier Mike Harris.
Broten’s News conference on Monday came a week after the assistant deputy minister of education sent a memo directing the boards to reach a deal with the unions before the start of the 2012-13 school year and to work within a contract framework established by the Ministry of Education and the Ontario English Catholic Teachers Association (OECTA).
The memo suggests that school boards could be facing a provincial takeover if they do not sign teacher contracts within the next few weeks. But on Monday, Broten did not specify whether provincial legislation would include a takeover of school boards or simply force teachers back to work with a pay freeze.
Sam Hammond, president of the Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario, said Broten’s “blatant interference” in the collective bargaining process is problematic.
“That’s an absolute shame,” he said. “The minister’s timelines are absolutely unrealistic and arbitrary.”
The relationship between the Dalton McGuinty government and educators was once warm enough that the Premier managed to bring all the school boards and the unions to one bargaining table to streamline negotiations.
But with the government facing a $15-billion deficit, that relationship has cooled.
Though teachers are employed by the school boards, funding for the salaries comes from the Ministry of Education. The latest negotiations have seen the ministry assert its power partly by circumventing the school boards.
The ministry reached a deal with the OECTA by taking the unprecedented step of cutting Catholic school boards out of the agreement. The deal gave teachers in the 45,000-member union a two-year pay freeze, three unpaid professional development days, fewer sick days, as well as blocking them from banking unused ones.
Borden said traditionally teacher contracts have run for four years, but he said the provincial government has indicated it wants two-year deals.
The government has also reached an agreement with the Association of Professional Student Services Personnel that the province says meets its fiscal targets without compromising the classroom experience or student achievement.
This agreement follows the road map set out in the deal reached earlier with the OECTA. The province wants to use that deal as an example for school boards to use in local negotiations in order to meet the province’s fiscal parameters.
Government officials say eliminating Ontario’s deficit is the single most important step toward growing the economy to protect and create jobs and preserve significant gains made in education and health care. The province has asked doctors, broader public sector workers and teachers to hit the pause button on salary increases for two years.
“The government’s fiscal parameters are clear and we have to focus on reaching our targets through responsible local deals or by using the other tools available to the government, including legislation,” said finance minister Dwight Duncan.
