Heather Latter
Elementary and secondary school teachers across Rainy River District will make their own choice as to whether to continue with voluntary activities following the passing of Bill 115 earlier this month.
“It is an individual decision to shut down extra activities at this point,” Kent Kowalski, president of the local Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation, noted last week.
OSSTF vice-president Paul Elliott said high school teachers have been instructed to do their job, but participating in anything above and beyond that is their choice.
“We’re asking our members to very carefully consider the volunteer activities that they’ll be doing in the coming year,” echoed Trevor Bowles, president of the local Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario.
“It’s an individual decision” was his response when asked what impact students and parents might see at the elementary level.
However, the ETFO has introduced “McGuinty Mondays” in protest of the legislation, with teachers and education professionals being urged to not “participate in school-based or system level meetings of any kind, nor participate in regional ministry meetings, on Mondays for the foreseeable future.”
Secondary school teachers across the district and the province did refrain from participating in any extra-curricular activities on Sept. 12—the day after the bill was passed at Queen’s Park—to display their outrage over the legislation.
While Bill 115, known as the Putting Students First Act, imposes a new contract that freezes teachers’ wages for two years and bans them from walking off the job, Elliott stressed teachers are not protesting about the money.
“No one was allowed to come to their own collective agreement,” he explained, noting the unions wanted to go through the negotiation process that always has worked for both parties under the Labour Relations Act.
“But then they [the government] talked about the legislation . . . and the bill was introduced, all of [their] rights were taken away by one piece of legislation,” Elliott said.
He noted the way contract negotiations had worked in the past, each union member was able to vote on the deal. But that didn’t happen this time.
“The process is gone and a lot of the goodwill has disappeared,” Kowalski said.
“To have your right to have a voice and to negotiate a contract taken away, that’s huge,” agreed Bowles.
Kowalski indicated secondary school teachers are frustrated and upset.
“Nobody is pleased—it’s an attack on democracy,” he remarked, noting that’s why some teachers may choose not to lead extracurricular activities.
“It’s not directed in a negative way toward the students,” he stressed. “In fact, it hurts [the teachers] to not participate in the things they love.”
While it’s unclear which clubs and activities have been affected so far, many of the sports teams at the high school have been moving forward with their seasons.
“At this point in time, everything is status quo when it comes to the athletic programs,” said Fort High athletic director Shane Beckett.
“Each individual school board has the choice to decide whether they want to continue with their seasons, and so far at least, everything is going as planned with the NorWOSSA seasons.
“But that could change tomorrow or five weeks from now,” he warned.
Elliott noted the OSSTF still is negotiating with some boards outside of Rainy River District in hopes of developing a model for the rest of the province.
Meanwhile, it and the ETFO plan to launch a court challenge on the imposed legislation.
