Negotiations between local secondary occasional teachers and the Rainy River District School Board have broken off, and the teachers are planning to begin low-level sanctions starting this Monday (Feb. 20).
“Our collective agreement is one of the poorest ones in the province and our members are tired of seeing it eroded year after year,” said Ron Erb, president of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation District 5B Occasional Teachers’ Bargaining Unit.
“Our counterparts throughout Ontario are doing better in terms of both remuneration and working conditions, and we are determined to close the gap,” he stressed.
The occasional teachers will commence “level one” sanctions on Monday but they could escalate as time goes on.
“We don’t want to rush into this with guns blazing,” said Andrew Hallikas, chief negotiator for the District 5B OTBU.
“We want to have a meaningful dialogue with [the board]. We would like to settle this by bargaining,” he added. “Right now, it seems both sides are pretty entrenched.”
The teachers recently rejected an offer from the public board that included the same salary increase accepted by local elementary occasional teachers earlier this month.
Hallikas said that while the money being offered by the board is satisfactory, what the secondary teachers want is for their rate of pay to be tied to the salary grid for regular ones.
Over the last several years, regular teachers’ wages have increased by 21 percent while occasional teachers’ wages have gone up only five percent, he noted.
Since 2000, local secondary occasional teachers’ wages have slipped from being the sixth best in the province to 26th our of 31.
“That can’t continue to happen. Our members are just fed up with it,” Hallikas said. “We have a pretty irate membership right now. They’re pretty determined.”
While the current wage being offered by the board is acceptable, the occasional teachers’ wage eventually would drop over time in relation to regular teachers again unless the wage is tied to the salary grid, Hallikas argued.
Jack McMaster, director of education for the local public board, said the teachers were offered a “substantive increase.”
“The concern that the bargaining unit has with remuneration decay has certainly been rectified. We are moving in the right direction,” McMaster noted.
The latest offer would move local secondary occasional teachers from 26th in the province to above the halfway point, he added, and would place them above the average wage by a couple of dollars.
“We do like to look at where our employees stand in the province,” McMaster said. “We believe it’s fair.”
“The bargaining team was disappointed with the board’s position,” said Paul Elliott, provincial OSSTF executive officer and chair of the bargaining team.
“The issue involves facilitating future negotiations by relating OTBU remuneration to that of regular teachers, as is the case in most OTBU contracts today.
“This is a simple matter of equity,” he argued.
“What we ideally would like to be paid is the same daily rate as the lowest-paid teacher on the board,” Hallikas remarked.
Hallikas noted the Lakehead and Superior-Greenstone boards already have settled with their occasional secondary teachers, and have agreed to have their salaries tied to the grid.
“It’s not like this is something that is revolutionary. That’s the trend. That’s the way things are going,” he stressed.
Another difficulty for the occasional teachers is the fact it sometimes is difficult to recruit members to sit on the bargaining team.
“Occasional teachers are really a transient group. Sometimes our membership will change dramatically from year to year or semester to semester,” Hallikas explained.
“We have a great deal of difficulty getting together a bargaining team so we’re not on a level playing field, from our point of view,” he added.
Despite the difficulties in this round of bargaining, there remains hope for an agreement.
“There’s very good communication on both sides,” Hallikas said. “We understand the board’s position. Hopefully they understand ours.
“It’s a matter of principle and making sure our members are looked after.
“Our intent is to show the board they actually do need us, that we’re valuable to the system.”
Occasional teachers fill in for both short- and long-term periods when teachers are ill or absent. They possess the same qualifications as regular teachers.
In a press release issued last week, the local public board said occasional teachers often fill in while regular teachers are absent for professional development, thereby playing a role in student achievement.
“It is our hope we can continue without disruption,” McMaster said in the release.
The secondary occasional teachers have been in a legal strike position since late December. They had voted 100 percent in favour of strike action earlier that month.
Fort Frances Times
Local News from Across the Rainy River District
