Heather Latter
The labour relations issues between the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation District 5B and Rainy River District School Board remain, with both sides seemingly firm in their position on the specific issue regarding redundant teachers and qualifications.
“The critical issue which continues to divide us relates to an OSSTF proposal that would guarantee a redundant teacher access to any LTO [long-term occasional] position, regardless of whether or not that teacher was qualified to teach that position,” Director of Education Heather Campbell noted in a letter to OSSTF dated June 10.
“The determination as to the teacher’s ability to manage the assignment successfully would not be based on any objective criteria, but rather would be left entirely up to the teacher,” she wrote.
“The Board cannot agree to this proposal.”
Campbell added this proposal by OSSTF runs contrary to a provincially-accepted system of teacher qualifications.
“It contemplates physics teachers teaching music, and music teachers teaching technological education, based on their own self-assessment,” she said.
“This is not a system that can command public confidence and support, certainly not in areas where programming options for students are already limited,” Campbell warned.
But local OSSTF president Kent Kowalski argued their proposal works with the current regulations.
“They are using qualifications and programming as a manufactured argument against seniority,” he stressed, noting seniority is one of the pillars that they fight for and represent.
Kowalski indicated secondary school teachers have run programming for decades and haven’t had issues.
“It was largely based on the fact that there was a respect to make sure that anyone who was redundant or surplus had work; that they were given a priority to make sure they were working,” he said.
“Within the schools, there was always somebody willing to teach the program that needed to be taught,” he added.
Kowalski noted the difference with this has been demonstrated here over the past couple of years.
“That if you don’t pose exactly the qualifications [the board is] looking for, you’re bypassed,” he explained.
“And in fact, the most offensive part, we had redundant people and they hired somebody.
“There’s no reason for that,” Kowalski stressed. “Instead of working with us, that is now the established protocol.”
He suggested currently at the district high schools, “the vast majority of teachers teach something that is not on their record card.”
“They have for decades and will continue to—it is the only way that schools run,” he said.
“It’s no different here than anywhere else.”
But the local board claims it is a system that does not exist in any other OSSTF collective agreement.
In an effort to reach an agreement, the school board has proposed two solutions:
•referring the matter to interest arbitration, where the inclusion or exclusion of OSSTF’s proposal in the collective agreement would be determined by an objective adjudicator; or
•creating a system that would allow a surplus teacher to teach the LTO if they are deemed to be qualified based on previous experience—one that is found in other OSSTF agreements in Ontario.
“There’s no need for arbitration,” Kowalski countered in response to the first proposal. “This is an issue that can be bargained.
“To send it off to a third party is just time-consuming and expensive, and you end up with a deal that neither party wanted.”
He added the second proposal actually is “worse than what the current arrangement would be.”
“If you look at it carefully, they would decide when you’re qualified and when you’re not,” he argued.
Kowalski clarified teachers teaching special education, French, and most technical courses must be qualified.
“Other than that, you can be assigned anything,” he noted, adding the teachers are “deemed qualified” if the supervisory officer agrees and the teacher agrees they can teach that particular subject.
The board noted the issue of redundant teacher access to LTOs will affect less than a handful of teachers during any given school year.
“In fact, for the 2016-17 school year, the Board currently anticipates that redundancies will be limited to approximately 0.33 FTE [full-time equivalent],” Campbell wrote.
The letter also noted that if either of these proposed solutions is used to resolve the strike, and later experience shows it to be unsatisfactory, the language may be made the subject of renegotiation as early as the 2017 round of bargaining.
“Seniority is a staple of what a union does and they [the board] have gone after that, and we can’t agree to it,” Kowalski stressed.
The two parties last met May 31 facilitated by Peter Simpson, lead mediator for the province, but talks ended after 12 hours.
While both sides say they want a deal, no further talks have been scheduled.
