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Members of the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario (ETFO), along with other Ontario education workers, have been without a collective agreement since August 31, 2014. Education unions went through a protracted process to determine which issues would be assigned to central bargaining in this first round of negotiations under Ontario’s new two-tiered education sector bargaining law. The bargaining process didn’t begin until late January. No progress was made because, after a few sessions, the employer tabled strips that sought to wipe out more than a decade of improvements to working and learning conditions.
The strips related primarily to increasing management authority over the classroom and eroding protections for teacher workload and teacher professional judgment. The Ontario Public School Boards’ Association (OPSBA), the employer organization at the central table, wanted to give principals the right to increase the amount of supervision time assigned to teachers, determine what teachers did during their preparation time, and discard a new provincial policy that limits the number of diagnostic assessments school boards can require teachers to conduct in their classrooms. ETFO had fought hard for the policy, making the case that teachers’ professional judgment should be respected in terms of teachers knowing what assessments were most appropriate for their students each year.
OPSBA also wanted to give principals the authority to assign designated early childhood educators, who are part of the professional team in Ontario’s new full-day Kindergarten program, to duties outside of the classroom. This would leave many Kindergarten teachers on their own with 26 students or more for periods of instructional time. In addition, OPSBA was seeking to scrap a new teacher hiring policy that has brought consistency and fairness to teacher hiring in Ontario at a time when a large teacher surplus was encouraging boards to ignore our experienced occasional teachers who have been struggling to get full-time work. These and other employer demands represented a fundamental labour-management power struggle.
Early Strike Action
After taking a well-supported strike vote and going through an unsuccessful conciliation process in April, ETFO members were in a legal strike position as of May 10. On May 11, ETFO members began the first phase of their work-to-rule. No one likes to go on strike and education workers are mindful of the potential impact on students. ETFO’s work-to-rule activities have been designed to place the greatest pressure on the government, school boards and school administrators and to minimize the impact on students.
The core of ETFO’s work-to-rule centred on refusing to administer Ontario’s standardized tests and withdrawing from administrative duties linked to Ministry of Education and school board programs designed to increase student test results. Our members enthusiastically welcomed being released from preparing for and administering the tests and from the myriad related meetings and in-service sessions. For the first time since the tests were introduced in 1998, teachers were free to spend the time usually assigned to the tests on what they determined was meaningful classroom instruction. For the most part, parents seem to be on side; many parents are concerned about how stressful the testing is for their children. ETFO has been a longstanding opponent to Ontario’s standardized testing and is hopeful that this year’s cancellation of the tests will help demonstrate to parents and the public that we are better off without them.
From the perspective of students and parents, little changed during the first phase of ETFO’s work action. Teachers continued to participate in voluntary extra-curricular activities, including field trips. ETFO’s work-to-rule specifically avoided negatively affecting students with special needs. The job action involved teachers no longer attending school meetings and doing administrative paperwork, but meetings, administrative duties and other support for students for special needs continued.
Parents did take notice close to the end of the school year when most public school boards announced that student report cards wouldn’t be issued. As part of the job action, elementary teachers were forwarding student marks to principals but not completing the arduous online reporting process that included comments. This was another labour-management power struggle. After an effective ETFO ad campaign informing parents that principals had the capacity to easily produce the report cards, the school boards capitulated and distributed student marks to parents.
Next Steps
ETFO’s job action and participation in political rallies over the past few months have focused on pressuring the employer organization to remove its egregious contract strips from the negotiations table. As the beginning of a new school year approaches, we are cautiously optimistic that this will happen and that our bargaining team will be able to get on with negotiating a new central collective agreement for our members that protects our hard-won gains and moves us forward in terms of improving working and learning conditions in our schools.
Vivian McCaffrey is coordinator of Communications and Political Action for the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario. Follow her on Twitter: @qpwatcher
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