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A LETTER FROM A TEACHER TO THE STUDENT'S COUNCIL EXPLAINING THE ONTARIO TEACHERS' STRIKE OF 2000

from OSSTF District 12 (Toronto)

Date: Oct 29, 2000

Message from Vivian Payne:

Several colleagues have approached me at Council to say that they find the things I write to use with Western Tech students useful. I am happy to share them with you. This latest one is very long. It was written to clarify some things that came up at a lunch time meeting with the Students' Council. The students are very confused, even about the term 'union'. They seemed to think the union is our real employer, ie) I was asked if we wanted more money, why didn't our union just give it to us and leave the school board and the government alone?

This Government's union bashing is definitely paying off for them. However, we have direct contact with the students, and let's teach them the truth at Ground Zero. I strongly encourage Branch Presidents to reach out to their student councils and offer information.

October 28, 2000 (copy and distribute as you see fit)

To The Student Council:

Thank you for the meeting yesterday at lunch. I am happy to do another one. Also, I suggest you invite one of the trustee candidates in for a session. Some points that came up deserve written attention. For legal purposes, I categorically affirm that this document is a response to students' requests for my thoughts and information. It was written at home, on my own time, on my own computer and printed on my own paper. No TDSB resources were used in its creation. Reproduction rights are granted to the Student Council and it is Student Council's responsibility as to what they do with this document.

  1. Unions - Unions are formed by working people for the express purpose of negotiating the wages and working conditions of their members. Teachers pay their union dues to have the union protect them. Strictly speaking, it is not the union's job to worry about the welfare of anybody else other than its own members. However, in the case of a teacher's union, it is made up of teachers and teachers are people who are naturally inclined to care about young people (if they are not naturally inclined this way, they usually quit teaching fairly early on and make their career in some other field). I promise you our debates include concern for students' welfare but ultimately, if the union has to decide between students' feelings and the protection of its members, its job is to protect its members. It would not be a good union if it did not.

  2. Sports - Sports are not happening because there are no conveners for the TDSB. Conveners are elected at a spring meeting of all the coaches. Conveners book the fields for games, arrange transportation for teams, look after all the paperwork for insurance, keep the players' stats and registration information, set the schedule for the whole season, etc., etc.. Conveners also teach their full load at their home school and coach their own teams. Conveners get no extra time or extra money. Convening is a volunteer job. This year, nobody volunteered and so there are no leagues.

  3. Too Many Strikes? - Before your generation of high school students, job action by any group in the education sector was rare. Before the present situation, for 20 years, 98% of contracts were negotiated and settled with no open disputes that affected students. Recent history, you know from your own experience, is different. As a group, intellectually and psychologically, teachers have not changed that much from the type of people teachers were 20 years ago, or even 10 years ago. So why is there conflict now when there wasn't before? Something has changed, and if it's not the teachers, what is it?

  4. Toronto Public School Conflict So Far - The arguments have been public, the protests and petitions many, but there really have been only two interruptions to classes (so far) since the Mike Harris government was elected. Considering the number of attacks the teachers and educational workers have suffered, this is quite surprising, and further evidence that the teachers do try to get along with their masters - we've been pretty good dogs, considering.

    a) The 1997 Province Wide Legal Political Protest against Bill 160 - This lasted two weeks. This is the one the media refers to as an 'illegal walk-out', which completely ignores the ruling of the Ontario Supreme Court that we were on a legal political protest. During the protest, the government took the teachers to court to force us back to work. They lost the court case and we stayed out until the end of the second week. At the end of the second week, the unions felt that since we had won in court, the government would have to start to pay attention to us. We went back to work filled with hope. Instead, the government became even more vindictive and passed Bill 160 quickly, with little public consultation and over the objections of education experts around the world. They also passed a law that removed principals and vice-principals from the unions - this was pure revenge against the principals and VP's for taking part in the protest.

    b) The 1998 CUPE Strike. CUPE is another union, the caretakers and the secretaries belong to it. They are not being treated well either. They went on strike for two weeks. The teachers did not go on strike, although some schools (including Western) were closed because their heating systems do not work without a trained person attending to them daily. Western teachers had to report for work at other school sites during the CUPE strike. You had two weeks off, we did not. In most cases, we were compelled to do meaningless tasks just to keep us busy. We were also told to supply our own toilet paper. CUPE got a 1% raise and a 3% signing bonus. Our present contract, which was negotiated around the same time without any strike action, got teachers only a .75 % raise, we gave up prep time for on-calls, and we did not get a signing bonus. Incidentally, CUPE is poised for another strike very soon. Both contracts were negotiated around the same time and they expired around the same time. Also, shortly after the CUPE strike, Principals and Vice-Principals got a 3% bonus, which puts the lie to the BoardÕs position that it was broke and could only afford very small pay raises for CUPE and OSSTF.

    c) The Possible Legal OSSTF Strike - It has already been postponed once by OSSTF because we felt that negotiations were going well. The fact that we postponed it shows that we are willing to talk. If the strike happens, it will be because the other side is not taking us seriously. Strikes are serious actions. The union's job is to get a contract, not a strike. We want a contract that protects our jobs, our students, our schools, our sanity, and public education in general. If the other side is not willing to negotiate sincerely, then a strike may be necessary to get their attention. As far as is possible, our strike action will be designed to cause students minimal disruption. Classes will continue and you will continue to work for your credits. However, we may escalate to a more traditional strike later on, but we hope not.

  5. Private Schools - Private school teachers teach only 5/8 periods, compared to our 7/8. Private schools limit their class sizes to about 15 kids a class. Private school teachers get paid the same or more than public school teachers. Private schools have state of the art resources and facilities. If that is what is good enough for private schools, then why isn't that what is good enough for public school students?

  6. Teaching Time - Teaching time is defined differently from province to province. Ontario now has the most limited definitions. Teachers from coast to coast put in about the same number of hours in real time. Statistics Canada reports that, as a group, teachers put in more voluntary work hours than any other group of workers. Western Tech's average per teacher last year was 14.5 hours per week, and they were only counting extra work done outside of what most people consider the length of a normal work day, eight hours. Most teachers work straight through the lunch hour and very few take what most other workers would consider a real 'coffee break'.

  7. The Reduction of Extra-curriculars - Extra-curricular activities have not been forbidden by the teachers' union. Extra-curricular activities are volunteer activities. Volunteer activities by any person in this society are, by definition, activities that are done for free and in the person's spare time. Money is not the issue here at all - time is. If the teachers were to be offered money to do extra-curriculars, most teachers would still not have any spare time to do them. Every hour spent working in front of a scheduled class means about two hours of prep/evaluation outside of the class. So, to give Western Tech teachers an extra hour of classes does not just total an extra five hours a week, realistically it means an extra fifteen. Bear in mind that teachers can't be disciplined or fired for running a club in a lousy or disorganized way, but they can be disciplined or fired for running their classes in a lousy or disorganized way. It is little wonder that they choose to concentrate on their actual jobs given that doing the job well is what guarantees their paycheques and keeps a roof over their families' heads.

  8. The New Curriculum - The Ministry did not really provide us with a new 'curriculum'. This is another example of this government's penchant for re-defining the English language. A curriculum is a complete course, with the lessons, materials, and evaluations ready to go. This is not what they have given us. In reality, the Ministry has provided us with massive lists of 'expectations'. It is up to teachers to write the courses to fit those expectations by choosing the materials, designing the lessons, and figuring out the evaluations. To verify this, simply ask the Gr.9 English teachers what they are doing with their classes right now. If there was such a thing as the 'Common Curriculum', the English teachers should be able to give you the same answer. The reality is that each teacher is doing something different and so is, in effect, writing a whole new course in addition to teaching it. Teachers with Gr.9 and Gr.10 have this problem doubled. Next year, Gr.11 courses will have to be developed, so this will be tripled. I don't even want to think about the year after that and Gr.12!

    You might think we'd just re-cycle what we'd used the year before so that we'd only be developing one new course at a time. Great in theory, but it never works out that way. A unit that works one year for one group of kids may be a total dud for the kids the next year. I have yet to meet the teacher who can simply open a file drawer and pull out a course. Courses are not 'rabbit- in-the-hat' tricks. Maybe there are some teachers who try to do this, but I'll bet their courses don't work very well. If the government wants good courses, they ought to give us proper time to create them.

  9. The Purpose of Strike Action - The purpose of a strike is to cause disruption. There is no point in having a strike if nobody notices. Strikes work because they cause disruption. Just last week, the truckers went on a form of strike by blockading the 401. Thousands of motorists were inconvenienced, and thousands of businesses were affected. Before the end of one day, the government was sitting down and listening to the truckers, attempting to find the solutions the truckers had asked for last spring. When you knock on the door and nobody answers, sometimes you have to knock harder or look for other ways to get in.

    Last spring, we actually were on our way to a contract that the TDSB would have been happy with and the union would have been happy with. It met all the requirements of Bill 160, as horrible as it is. Then the Education Minister read our agreement (she now gets to read them all before they're signed so there really is no such thing in Ontario as 'free collective bargaining' anymore) and she didn't like it so she passed Bill 74 which changed the law and killed our deal. There is nothing to stop her from passing yet another law if she doesn't like the contract we negotiate now.

    You might find it interesting to know what was in the contract that the Minister killed with Bill 74. The TDSB teachers had agreed to a lengthening of the school day to add a remedial period for students who were failing. It would have worked like this: Students who were failing my English courses would have to attend an extra class with me at the end of the day so that I could tutor them on their class work. Students who were passing would not have to attend although they could if they wanted to find out how to improve. This would have increased my 'teaching time' in a valuable way that benefited struggling students and it would not have increased my preparation or marking load. It would have resulted in fewer failures for students. It would also have been an opportunity for teachers to learn why some students fail and it might have encouraged teachers to improve their teaching methods. (As a personal example, I had one guy who sat at the back of the class and was failing miserably. When I made him come in at lunch and got to sit right beside him while he worked, I noticed how close he held his paper to read it. I realized he needed glasses. The kid was failing because he couldn't see properly. His performance improved radically when he got glasses and I moved him to the front of the room. As his performance improved, he began to feel better about school and stopped being such a rude, loud-mouth behaviour problem.)

    So, there are all kinds of good things to be said about a scheduled remedial program but Janet Ecker didn't say any of them...she said remedial programs were a "cute trick" that teachers were trying to use to avoid working longer hours, ignoring that we had obviously agreed to longer hours by suggesting the remedial program. Her rejection of our contract shows that Bill 74 is really about reducing the number of teachers in the system and saving money. It is not about improving education.

  10. The Future for Extra-curriculars - This is not promising.Giving each teacher an extra class to teach means 20% fewer teachers are needed to teach the same number of courses. Remember too, that they have reduced the number of years necessary for high school by eliminating OAC's. That is a 20% reduction of teachers all by itself. Even if teachers still have the desire in the future to volunteer extra-curriculars, a 40% reduction means 40% fewer people around to do them. The situation now is bad, but you just have to do the math to figure out it's going to get worse.

Concluding Comments

I do not mean to imply by any of my comments that teachers are any more hard-done by than any other group in this society. Many people work hard and long hours and don't get a lot of recognition for it. It's as unfair that it happens to them as it is that it happens to teachers. When I am confronted by a person who says "I work long hours, I don't complain!", I reply "You should. Nobody should be overworked." When they say "I don't get paid what you do," I agree that I am pretty well paid compared to some other people and that as far as I'm concerned, everybody should be paid more. When they say "I don't get summers off!", I say, "You could if you go to teacher's college, haven't you heard about the teacher shortage? I'll help you with your application." Nobody's ever taken me up on this offer, and their rejection usually includes comments like "What, me? Get stuck in a room 8 hours a day with somebody else's snotty-nosed brats? No thanks." or "What? Go back to school? I hate school, I got better things to do with my time." In one way or another, these people who like to call teachers names and accuse us of being lazy, end up saying that they think it's a pretty crummy job anyway and that they're vastly superior to it. Sad to say, few people recognize the contradiction here. On the one hand, teachers are lazy, fat cats with cushy jobs but on the other hand, the same people would rather have root canals every day than go into a classroom and deal with kids.

By now, I guess you've figured out that this is a complicated issue. You thought you were asking a simple thing when you asked me to come to speak to the Student Council about extra-curriculars. Teaching is truly an integrated endeavour - no activity in teaching is stand-alone. When you change even one little thing, it is going to affect the whole thing. I hope that what I have written here has allowed you to begin to understand some of the complexities. It saddens me that you have to understand them - I wish for the old days when teenagers were allowed to just worry about having fun and getting good marks. Times have changed, and not for the better. You are being robbed by this 'neo-conservative, global corporation, everything is product and time is money' mentality that rules the world and shapes all government policy.

 

Sincerely,

Vivian Payne  

P.S. Something to think about: This document represents 8 hours of preparation over two nights. It is a good example of how long it takes for teachers to prepare something useful for students. To write it, I have had to ignore, for a while, the opportunity to spend time with my own little boy.

 

mail: vpayne@istar.ca