Teachers have nothing good to say about that back-to-work bill

NEWS RELEASES

ELEMENTARY TEACHERS' FEDERATION OF ONTARIO

ONTARIO ENGLISH CATHOLIC TEACHERS' ASSOCIATION

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TORONTO - The sweeping back-to-work legislation imposed by the government on secondary school teachers in Durham, Rainbow and Peel is a blatant infringement of teachers' constitutionally-protected right to strike similar to Bill 115 in 2012, according to the Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario (ETFO).

"This is a legal strike about local issues. The fact that the Protecting the School Year Act makes strike action on both central and local issues illegal for these locals goes far beyond the pretext of protecting the school year for students," said ETFO President Sam Hammond. "We went through this with Bill 115 with the government legislating instead of negotiating."

"The Kathleen Wynne government is the same Liberal government that stripped education workers' collective agreements and collective bargaining rights during 2012. Quite clearly, the leopard has not changed its spots."

Hammond added that while the back-to-work legislation does not affect ETFO's current work-to-rule strike action, it is not the solution for the dysfunctional bargaining climate that the government has allowed to develop.

It has been nine months since contracts expired.

"The premier and the minister of education need to stop misleading the public by saying the current labour disputes are about money, which is a deliberate misrepresentation," added Hammond. "The demands of the Ontario Public School Boards' Association (OPSBA) to control teachers' preparation time, remove fair hiring practices, and increase supervision time and paperwork are the root of the bargaining problem."

"Imposing back-to-work legislation is not a move forward toward resolution – only real negotiation is. These isolated, local problems in Durham, Rainbow and Peel are becoming a province-wide problem thanks to this government's mismanagement of the situation."

The Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario represents 76,000 elementary public school teachers, occasional teachers and education professionals across the province.

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TORONTO - The government's imposition of back-to-work legislation on secondary school teachers in Durham, Rainbow and Peel regions is an attack on public secondary teachers' right to strike, according to the Ontario English Catholic Teachers' Association (OECTA).

"The government is using the Education Relations Commission to circumvent its own bargaining legislation," said OECTA president James Ryan.

During discussions leading up to Bill 122 in 2014, the government made it very clear that the Education Relations Commission (ERC) had no role in the bargaining process.

Yet today, for political expediency, the government has resurrected the ERC to justify and substantiate its own actions.

"This continues a pattern of the government's disingenuous approach to bargaining, which includes claiming its austerity agenda is the reason for impasse," said Ryan. "In fact, this is an issue of fundamental rights, which the government, in conjunction with the school boards, wants to strip from teacher collective agreements."

Ryan said the government must stop asserting that the current labour disputes are about compensation, when the real issues are contract strips that would allow school boards to dictate teachers' working conditions, remove their professional autonomy, and interfere with their capacity to meet student needs.

OECTA represents the almost 50,000 professional women and men who teach all grades in publicly funded English Catholic schools in Ontario.

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