2-tiered bargaining system, funding for negotiations come under fire
After months of unrest, which saw a labour board hearing and many strikes, Ontario’s teachers have inked tentative agreements with the provincial government.
Negotiations over the past few months managed to churn out five deals with the province’s elementary, secondary, Francophone and Catholic teachers’ unions.
But the new two-tiered bargaining system might have failed to make the grade. In fact, some classrooms could still see local job action happening as local issues continue to be hammered out.
That these talks were the first to take place under Ontario’s new bargaining design serves as a litmus test for the two-tiered method.
Last year, education minister Liz Sandals tabled legislation to overhaul the way her department negotiates contracts in schools. The School Boards Collective Bargaining Act, otherwise known as Bill 122,
established a two-tiered bargaining scheme.
That meant trustee associations and school boards (such as the Ontario Public School Boards' Association) were to join unions and the government at the table.
Whereas school boards and unions would negotiate local contract issues, the government would handle any provincewide provisions.
Under the centralized model, all three parties needed to support a contract before it could be ratified.
System takes a toll
That created difficulty for this round of negotiations, according to the teacher unions.
Negotiations under the two-tiered system took a toll on both the government and unions, with both parties admitting challenges.
In particular, unions said the bargaining process should be revamped before the next round of negotiations in order to ensure efficiency.
"The Ontario government created and passed the legislation that has led to this long and cumbersome bargaining process," said president of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers' Federation Paul Elliott.
And because some of the three-year contracts that were negotiated are retroactive and expire in 2017, teachers could be back at the bargaining table sooner than one might think, he said.
"This round of bargaining has been exceptionally lengthy and difficult but in the end we achieved a tentative agreement that the Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario believes is fair and meets the needs of our members," echoed Sam Hammond, ETFO’s president. ETFO members had been without a contract for 14 months.
The new system also took a toll on the employer.
"Central and local negotiations have been difficult, and we never expected otherwise. We knew that reaching a negotiated settlement, in our current fiscal climate, would be challenging," said Ontario’s education minister Liz Sandals in a statement.
"Negotiations were challenging for all sides, but it speaks to the dedication and commitment of everyone involved that collaboration prevailed and a tentative agreement was reached."
Failing grade from lawyer
Were he to assign the new two-tiered bargaining system a grade, labour and employment lawyer Howard Levitt in Toronto said he would mark down a B minus "because it caused the labour board hearing, strikes all over the place, expectations of strikes — some of which didn’t happen, but some of which did — and caused dislocation and parents having to find alternative arrangements for their children, even anticipatorily."
He added the two-tiered system essentially opened the job action floodgates, making strikes the choice route on two different levels as opposed to just one, therefore further muddling the process.
"There were potential strikes on two potential fronts rather than just one, and a real confusion to some extent as to what is a local versus a provincewide issue," he said.
A so-called local issue, in many instances, is in reality an issue that could concern other schools (and is therefore a provincial issue), or they are so minutely localized it would be tedious and almost irrelevant to discuss at the bargaining table, said Levitt.
"The whole system made no sense."
A better bargaining system would be a return to the old method. Levitt went so far as to say that not permitting strikes would be the ideal rubric, though he noted the education sector does not play well into essential services legislation. In such a scenario, both parties would undergo mandatory arbitration.
"It’s not an appropriate model for strikes," Levitt said, adding that the intention of any strike — to hurt the employer on some level — is lost when it comes to public sector schools.
"You’re striking against the party who is your workplace partner, and if you strike them too hard and run them out of business, you’re hurting your own membership. In other words, there is market discipline," he said.
"As is generally the case in the public service, there is no market discipline at all because you’re not striking against your bargaining partner, you’re not striking against the school boards — the people who are affected are the parents."
Bargaining chips
Ontario also came under fire for providing funds — nearly $4 million in total — to the teachers’ unions to cover the cost of negotiations, including among other things, money for pizza.
While the province has maintained this is not unusual, Levitt said other employee groups and unions could come asking for something similar.
He called the funding "absolutely scandalous" and said he has never come across such a case of a government employer paying a public service union for negotiations.
The move could set a precedent for other government employers, such as those in the health-care or policing industries, he said.
Voting on the various tentative contracts will occur this month.
