Public school teachers in Ontario in Canada are set to go on strike against the state government for imposing new contracts under a controversial anti-strike law.
Teachers demonstrated outside the convention centre where the Liberal Party was choosing its candidate to run in prime ministerial elections.
They said they want to see the next Prime Minister rip up those contracts and hammer out new ones with their unions.
Public elementary teachers also staged one-day strikes in protest against Education Bill 115, while high school teachers cut out extracurricular activities and some administrative duties.
Current Prime Minister of Ontario Dalton McGuinty said he personally called union leaders to ask that teachers resume extracurricular activities, but protesters outside the convention centre said that’s not going to happen.
Many have stopped all their extracurricular work and don’t plan to return to those voluntary activities while the two-year contract is still in force.
James Sullivan, an elementary school teacher at a school in Durham Ontario, said: ‘I can’t go back to those activities when we are being denied the democratic right to collective bargaining.
‘McGuinty said we cannot legislate the goodwill of our teachers, and he’s right
‘So I don’t think that the strike is going to go ahead.’
Both the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario and the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation say their members have overwhelmingly voted in favour of political protests if the government forced new contracts on them, which may include walk-out.
They plan to meet with their executives this week to discuss their next steps.
ETFO leader Sam Hammond, called the government’s actions a ‘disgraceful misuse of power’ and warned that it won’t be ‘business as usual’.
Harvey Bischof, Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation Vice President, said: ‘When all other avenues for recourse are taken from us by the hammer of legislation, then we will fight back with the means we have available.
‘Broten did the one thing she absolutely shouldn’t have done, which is take an irrevocable step that’s going to have, at this point it would appear, a two-year impact on the operation of schools.’
Ontario Education Minister Laurel Broten used Education Bill 115 to impose contracts that freeze teachers’ wages for two years, cut sick days in half and end the practice of banking and cashing out unused sick days.
She said: ‘This province has a $14-billion deficit. Education is the second-most expensive item in the budget. And spending on education has skyrocketed, despite falling enrolment.
‘There isn’t a bottomless pit of money, as the public sector seems to think; it comes from taxpayers.’
The dispute has been going on for 11 months. It was last February when the government told teachers it needed to rein in spending to deal with the deficit.
Meanwhile, conciliation talks between St Francis Xavier University in Antigonish Nova Scotia and the union representing its professors and many other staff broke down on Saturday night.
The positions of lecturers and University management remain about $500,000-a-year apart after a fourth and final round of conciliation talks, that association president described.
This will begin a 14-day countdown until the association is in a legal strike position.
Peter McInnis of the Canada Union of Public employees (CUPE) said: ‘This isn’t just about money.
‘But, monetarily, what we’re really looking at is less than the cost-of-living increase.
‘The last contract we signed with them three years ago was a concessionary one.’
‘We can’t go on like this enough is enough, lecturers need a wage rise and better terms and conditions.’
Ramsay Duff, vice-president of finance and operations for St. Francis Xavier University, said: ‘Our full offer included a 6.9 per cent increase over four years.
‘That’s consistent with regional and national settlements recently.’
The association represents 407 full- and part-time faculty, librarians, archivists, laboratory instructors, nursing school staff, writing centre employees and Coady International Institute workers.
Over 100 of the University workers are on eight-month long contracts. They are asking that those contracts be extended to 10 months or a year.
According to Duff, full-time professors at the university earn $68,552 to $145,546 annually, not including benefits.
However, most professors are part-time and do not earn anywhere near this amount.
The university’s governors say that state funding has been cut by 17 per cent over the past four years and now stands at about $30 million, or 42 per cent of the university’s budget.
They have allowed the university to increase its tuition fees to its 4,000 students, from whom it generates over 50 per cent of its revenue, by over three per cent last year.
To help deal with declining funding, Duff claimed that senior administrators have taken wage rollbacks of five to 10 per cent over the past two years.
There have also been wage freezes for school administrators.
‘All the while, association members have continued to receive their increases. So we’re simply not in a position to pay (for the requested pay raises).’
Of the 78.4 per cent of union members members who took part, 79.6 per cent voted to take strike action in the autumn of 2012.
Students beginning a new term this week support their lecturers and their right to strike. Brendan Morley, a third-year philosophy student, said on Sunday that he has been watching the negotiations closely.
He said: ‘I understand the faculty’s position and support them.
‘I am against the university management attacks on lecturers and other staff.
‘Students like me find themselves struggling for money as fees keep going up.
‘The government both at state level and at national level have made massive cuts in education.
‘They want to privatise it and take it out of the public hands.
‘Lecturers support us in struggles against rising fees and we stand with them.’
• The Employment Insurance programme in Canada continues to fail unemployed workers, says a leading trade unionist.
Canadian Labour Congress President Ken Georgetti said: ‘We know that only 37.9% of unemployed Canadians actually qualify for Employment Insurance.
‘That means either there are roadblocks put in the way of people receiving benefits from an insurance programme that they paid into, or they have been out of work for so long that they have used up their benefits.’
Georgetti was commenting on the release by Statistics Canada of its Labour Force Survey for December 2012.
There were 1,357,200 unemployed Canadians in November and the unemployment rate was 7.1%.
In the 15 to 24 age group, unemployment stood at 14.1% and 47.6% of young workers are employed only part-time.
Georgetti says it is especially galling for the unemployed to be told by the federal government that there are jobs and skills shortages in Canada.
‘By latest count there are 5.3 unemployed people for every job vacancy.
‘This government and employers should be providing training and apprenticeship programmes so that unemployed workers can be better matched to the jobs that are available.’
Georgetti says that any recovery from the Great Recession of 2008-09 has been sluggish.
He added: ‘The unemployed and their families are the victims of a financial and employment crisis caused by corporate greed and mismanagement.
‘The CEOs continue to get their fat pay packages while ordinary workers, their families and communities live with the consequences.
