By Margaret Brown
Public secondary school teachers stepped up the pressure on the Ottawa Carleton District School Board to resume negotiations for a contract with additional work-to-rule job action on March 24.
Work-to-rule job action normally entails workers refusing to perform duties they are not contractually bound to do.
The teachers are refusing to cover the duties of absent teachers or input marks for report cards, except for students in the double cohort. The teachers will still provide marks for the mid-term report cards that come out around this time, but are refusing to input the grades into the school’s system. They will still input the marks for students in the double cohort, who need the grades for university and college applications, because those students already face extra competition.
The union has tried to choose work-to-rule job actions that will cause the least disruption for students but still encourage the board to come back to the bargaining table, says Susan Rab, president of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation bargaining unit in the Ottawa-Carleton area.
Shelley Pearen says the job action hasn’t affected her son, who is in Grade 9 at Lisgar Collegiate.
“It doesn’t seem to have any effect. My son sees a lot of the teachers, and he’s involved in a lot of team sports, but he hasn’t mentioned it at all,” Pearen says.
“He still does running with the track and field team and things like that. I haven’t noticed any difference. The teachers have been great.”
The teachers at public high schools like Lisgar Collegiate have been without a collective agreement longer than any other group of teachers in the province. Their contract expired Aug. 31, 2001.
More than six weeks after leaving the negotiating table, the board agreed to resume talks with the union April 7 and 8.
“We’ve said all along that we would like to come back, that we would like the board to come back,” Rab says.
Negotiations for a contract broke off on Feb. 19 when the board walked out. Rab says the key issue is salary increases.
“We’re currently the lowest paid teachers in Ontario because we’re the only ones that don’t have a salary adjustment for last year,” Rab says.
The other issues are benefits and smaller class size.
Rab says if they haven’t reached a settlement after these bargaining dates, they will consider increasing the work-to-rule job action.
“I’m optimistic. It’s way better with them coming to the table than not being at the table. We can’t get a settlement without getting to the table. So it’s a good sign that the board is at least willing to talk,” Rab says.
Some groups are concerned about the effect the delay has had on the teachers and the quality of education.
“Generally, we’re concerned about any job action.,” says Bronwyn Funiciello, chair of Our Schools, Our Communities, a volunteer group of parents devoted to improving education.
“However, we’re sympathetic to all of the factors that led to its inevitability.”