September 5, 2013 - Vol. 2
No. 48
One
Year
Anniversary
of
Kitchener-Waterloo
By-Election
Expression Given to Collective Will
of the People
Against Austerity
One
Year
Anniversary
of
Kitchener-Waterloo
By-Election
• Expression Given to Collective Will of the
People Against Austerity
Legislature Opens
September 9
• Liberals and PCs Set to Carry on in the Face
of Growing Opposition to Attacks on Workers' Rights - Dan
Cerri
• Status of Anti-Worker Legislation
Opening of New School
Year
• Teachers and Education Workers Re-Affirm:
Negotiate Don't Dictate!
- Enver Villamizar
• Update on Negotiations - Mira Katz
• New Management Model Imposed On
Windsor-Essex Catholic School Board
- Laura Chesnik
One Year
Anniversary of Kitchener-Waterloo By-Election
Expression Given to Collective Will of the People
Against Austerity
September 6 marks the one year anniversary of the
rejection of the austerity agenda by the working people and electorate
in the riding of Kitchener-Waterloo
(KW) in a by-election. Both the Liberals and Progressive Conservatives
(PCs) tried to use the by-election to gain legitimacy for their
respective versions of
austerity but both were soundly defeated. Their defeat represented an
historic collective expression of the people's will against the
anti-social austerity
agenda.
The by-election was a
result of then-Premier Dalton
McGuinty appointing then-PC MPP
Elizabeth Witmer as Chair of the Workplace Safety and
Insurance Board (WSIB). In appointing Witmer, who was the first
Minister
of Labour in the Harris government, it became clear the Liberals intend
to further privatize the
compensation system and force
injured workers to fend for themselves. Witmer's
appointment also represented an attempt by the Liberals to gain the one
seat they required
to form a majority government in the Legislature with which they could
then impose their version of austerity, beginning with teachers and
education
workers.
The KW by-election showed the potential of the
independent politics of the working class bringing together all those
who see the necessity to defend the rights of all. Injured workers,
steelworkers, teachers and education workers united in action to
mobilize the electorate to take a political stand that defended the
rights of all. They called on everyone to join in to defeat the
Liberals and PCs as a way to hold governments to account for their
wrecking and attacks on workers.
The defeat of these two parties in the KW by-election
was a result of the organized resistance of the working people who
blocked an agenda that did not represent their interests. The
by-election particularly presented an opportunity for the teachers and
education workers to fight against the attack on their right to have a
say, one of the main elements of Bill 115. Working people were able to
hold the government to account. This organized resistance was carried
forward in the fight to defeat Bill 115 and paved the way for its
eventual repeal. It set the tone for the successes that followed. The
defeat of the Liberals and PCs in KW put everyone on notice that the
workers of Ontario are a force to be reckoned with. It was the
groundwork for the defeat of both the Liberals and PCs in the latest
by-elections in Windsor-Tecumseh and London West held on August 1.
The significance of the KW by-election becomes more
evident with passing time as the working people continue to gain
confidence that they can block the anti-social austerity agenda and
create the conditions for a truly new direction for the economy of
Ontario.
Legislature
Opens
September
9
Liberals and PCs Set to Carry on in the Face of
Growing Opposition to Attacks on Workers' Rights
- Dan Cerri -
The Second Session of the 40th Parliament of the Ontario
Legislature is set to resume on September 9. The last session rose on
June 11, after passing
the budget that imposed four more years of austerity on the people
of Ontario. The last session was characterized by new anti-worker
arrangements such
as the use of the Labour Relations Board to make illegal the
coordinated withdrawal of extracurricular and voluntary activities by
teachers and education workers, as well
as the introduction of new anti-worker legislation.
While the Legislature was recessed, five by-elections
were held. In the ridings of Windsor-Tecumseh and London West, the
electorate overwhelmingly
rejected the anti-worker austerity agenda being advanced in the
Legislature by the Liberals and PCs. In these two ridings, a clear
statement was made against
both the Liberal and PC versions of the anti-social austerity agenda,
showing that there continues to be no mandate from the people for the
direction the
minority government is taking Ontario. Despite this, the Liberals and
PCs have given no indication that they are backing off.
One of the first orders of
business in the new session will be Royal Assent for the budget. This
will no doubt be used to claim that everyone must now fall in line with
its austerity dictate, despite the fact that the people are against
this austerity agenda.
At the recent Association of Municipalities of Ontario
(AMO) Conference held in Ottawa, Premier Kathleen Wynne gave an
indication that the focus of
this session will be to bring in new arrangements for collective
bargaining for public sector workers. She said: "Our government is
determined to build a
sustainable model for wage negotiations that is respectful of both
collective bargaining and a fair and transparent interest arbitration
process." Wynne is
determined to convince people through her trademark "collaborative"
rhetoric
that everyone must now fall in line with the austerity agenda to tackle
the debt and
deficit.
The PCs echoed Wynne's push for new arrangements. At the
AMO Conference, Hudak said that a province-wide public sector wage
freeze and changes to the
arbitration system and pensions are in order. PC House Leader Jim
Wilson was also quoted as saying that "exceedingly generous contracts
being handed out
to emergency workers through [the] arbitration system are forcing
municipal leaders to choose between raising taxes and taking fire
trucks and police cruisers
off the road and that the [PC and Liberal] parties should work
together on 'comprehensive' legislation to reform the process."
The PCs have also pledged to re-introduce a motion of
non-confidence in the government that, if passed, could lead to a
general election. With the PC
Policy Convention taking place September 20-22 in London and
indications that the knives are coming out for Tim Hudak, it is
unlikely that the confidence
motion will give anyone confidence in the PCs, that is, any confidence
that
their interests will be better defended by their "proscriptive" version
of austerity.
Clearly the working people can expect that in the new
Legislature all sorts of debate will now take place on how to impose
austerity on the working
people, especially public sector workers and those who work for
municipal
governments or are under the system of interest arbitration such as
police, firefighters,
nurses and others declared "essential services." At the same time,
there will be ongoing debate over how best to use the public purse to
ensure that monopolies
based in Ontario are serviced in the name of "job creation" or "skills
development."
All indications suggest that this new session of the
Legislature will be a continuation of the last. Despite the voice of
the working people saying No! to the Liberals and PCs in the
by-elections, they are carrying on business as usual to pass their
versions of austerity, including anti-worker arrangements to
champion the interests of the rich. This will only deepen the crisis in
which the Legislature is mired as the working people of Ontario
continue to express their
No! in new ways to an agenda that is against their interests.
Status of Anti-Worker Legislation
The Legislature's agenda will open with
Second Reading debate on several anti-worker bills introduced as
Private Members' bills by the PCs.[1] They include:
Bill 17, An Act to amend the Workplace Safety and
Insurance Act, 1997 to provide employers with the right to participate
in alternate insurance
plans;
Bill 62, An Act to amend the Labour Relations Act,
1995 to increase the rights of members of trade unions with respect to
the certification of trade
unions;
Bill 63, An Act to amend the Labour Relations Act,
1995 with respect to the Ontario Labour Relations Board and other
matters;
Bill 64, An Act to amend the Labour Relations Act,
1995 to protect the rights of employees in collective bargaining and
the financial interests of
members of trade unions; and
Bill 73, An Act to amend the Labour Relations Act,
1995 with respect to certain public sector employers in the
construction industry.
Over the summer, other anti-worker bills introduced by
the PCs were referred to Standing Committees. Bill 5, the
Comprehensive
Public
Sector
Compensation
Freeze
Act,
2013 was referred to the Standing
Committee on the Legislative Assembly and Bill 74, Fairness and
Competitiveness
in Ontario's Construction Industry Act, 2013 was sent to the
Standing
Committee on Finance and Economic Affairs.
Note
1. See Ontario Political Forum, July 10,
2013 - Vol. 2, No. 43.
Opening of
New School Year
Teachers and Education Workers Re-Affirm:
Negotiate Don't Dictate!
- Enver Villamizar -
As the school year begins, negotiations between unions
and local school boards continue on how to implement the contract the
government imposed using
Bill 115 and the various Memorandums of Understanding (MOUs) that were
subsequently signed by teachers' and education workers' unions.
As part of their ongoing dictate, the government has "offered" to
return $160 million of the over $1 billion they cut from education as a
carrot
to get school boards to agree to append the MOUs.
Leading up to and during
the summer months, most
bargaining units of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers' Federation
(OSSTF) and Elementary
Teachers' Federation of Ontario (ETFO) also participated in a minimum
of three days of tightly restricted "local bargaining" with school
boards. These were part of the MOUs the provincial government
"permitted" OSSTF
and ETFO and included contract language outside of the contracts
already imposed on them. The government affirmed this is their form of
collective bargaining.
The provincial government
is now presenting itself as a
neutral party as unions and school
boards
try to agree on how to implement the various MOUs.
At the same time, the government is waiting in the wings -- using the
refusal of some school boards and their locally-elected officials to
accept the dictated
terms -- to bolster its demand for new legislation to impose provincial
bargaining, usurping the role of locally-elected school boards -- the
actual employers of
teachers and education workers -- and local unions.
In this situation, the government is presenting dictate
as a mechanism to ensure boards accept the imposed terms. It is using
the results of the chaos caused
by its dictate to justify bringing in new arrangements that will
eliminate or at least severely restrict decision-making and
negotiations at the local level between
unions and school boards in favour of centralized negotiations with the
government. The government wants these new arrangements in order to
guarantee that
it can impose its anti-social austerity parameters in the education
sector without local school boards and trustees or local unions
standing in the way.
Teachers and education workers are in favour of new
arrangements that serve to empower them to have more say over what
happens in the schools and the direction of the education system. These
types of arrangements are urgently needed so that the experience of
teachers and education workers along with professional expertise can be
used to improve the education system and contribute to opening
society's path to progress. However, the type of arrangements the
government wants to impose are to eliminate any input from teachers and
education workers in decision-making, as well as that of locally
elected trustees. What happens in the education system is to be of no
concern to them, which is ridiculous. Teachers, education workers and
locally-elected trustees have every right to demand that the government
negotiate any new arrangements on the basis of affirming the right of
teachers, education workers and locally-elected officials to play a
meaningful role in deciding the direction of the system for which they
are responsible. This includes deciding the wages and working
conditions they require so as to guarantee the teaching
conditions which are the students' learning conditions. The well-being
of the students in terms of learning depends on the well-being of
teachers and education workers in terms of teaching.
Update on Negotiations
- Mira Katz -
Since the Ontario Secondary
School Teachers' Federation
(OSSTF) and the Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario (ETFO)
signed Memorandums of
Understanding (MOUs) with the government, modifying the terms imposed
by Bill 115, union representatives report that many boards have yet to
append the
MOUs to the imposed contracts. School boards indicate they have
concerns the government will not properly fund the new terms. It is
unclear which school
boards (or how many) have appended the MOUs that members of OSSTF and
ETFO accepted in June.
In an August 14
teleconference with local school boards, the Minister of Education, Liz
Sandals and Deputy Minister, George Zegarac, stated school boards
are expected to confirm in principle the agreement to append the MOU by
August 29, complete the process of appending by September 30 and send
in their
copies of the appended MOU to the Ministry by October 30.
Sandals said the province is providing up to $160
million in funding to boards, most of which is contingent upon them
appending the MOU within these
deadlines. "We know that all of our partners in the education sector
have an interest in starting the school year on a positive note," she
said in a statement. In
this way the government is putting itself in position to threaten
local school boards that do not fall in line with government dictate or
that don't trust the
government will do what it says it will do.
In an August 8 memo to school boards, Sandals indicated
that as part of the 2012-14 "negotiations" with teachers and education
workers, the government
committed to provide school boards with the "support that might be
required to implement the Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs) and
supporting
regulations." It has put together a working group of Ministry and
school board representatives to specify and validate school board
concerns related to the
additional costs of the MOUs.
Who Said What
Chief Negotiator for the Toronto Secondary Teachers'
bargaining unit, Lisa Black-Meddings, said the Toronto District School
Board (TDSB) has implemented
some elements of the MOU, such as sick leave, but is stalling on
others, including extending maternity leave provisions agreed to. "The
Toronto District School
Board is enormous, and sometimes things do take a long time to
roll out, but some of these delays are incredible," she said. "It's
very challenging to
understand why the board is taking so long." Black-Meddings said she
was hopeful the Board would meet the August 29 deadline to confirm
their intention
to implement the MOUs, as meetings have been interrupted somewhat by
summer vacations. The website of the Professional Student Services
Personnel, a bargaining unit of OSSTF District 12 informs that the TDSB
and other school boards have been "granted a 1 month extension by the
[government] to decide
whether or not they will append the MOU to the current [collective
agreements]."
Union representatives report that differing
interpretations of what was agreed to in the MOUs is also resulting in
problems. ETFO Rainbow president
Barb Blasutti stated: "My fear is the board is only willing to append
its own version of the memorandum of understanding, not the
understanding that is officially
reached between ETFO and the Ministry of Education."
Grand Erie District School Board (GEDSB) Chair Rita
Collver said her Board hadn't yet fully implemented the terms of the
MOUs. Some have been agreed
upon, with those outstanding being tied to increased provincial
funding. These include a change in the original number of unpaid days
and changes to
how banked sick leave days were to happen and to whom. Collver said the
GEDSB was seeking assurances before appending that the MOUs would be
fully
funded.
Uncertainty over whether the province would fully fund
school boards for the deals was also raised by the Brant Haldimand
Norfolk Catholic District School
Board as the reason why MOUs weren't being fully implemented with their
support staff represented by OSSTF.
New Management Model Imposed on
Windsor-Essex Catholic School Board
- Laura Chesnik -
On July 19, Minister of Education Liz Sandals announced
the government was imposing a new governance model on the Windsor-Essex
Catholic District
School Board (WECDSB) following its takeover and imposition of a
government-appointed supervisor a year ago.
Background
The supervisor was imposed on WECDSB on August 28, 2012,
at the height of the government's preparations to impose its
dictated austerity parameters onto teachers, education workers and
school boards across the province.
The takeover of the WECDSB was based on the
recommendation of Deloitte and Touche, the accounting firm imposed on
the Board by the Minister
of Education under section 257.30 (d) of the Education Act
that permits the initiation of an investigation if the Minister "has
concerns about the
board's ability to meet its financial obligations."
At the time, the Chair of the WECDSB Barb Holland,
called the imposition of a supervisor "unwarranted" and accused the
province of making the
appointment in an effort to force the Board to sign off on the
Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the government and the
provincial executive
of the Ontario English Catholic Teachers' Association (OECTA). The
first act of the appointed temporary supervisor was to sign the MOU on
behalf of the
board. This OECTA MOU was used to set the template for the contracts
eventually imposed on all teachers, education workers and local school
boards using
Bill 115.
The supervisor was also responsible for overseeing a
forensic audit of the WECDSB that was used to slash a group of board
retirees' health benefits for
which they had already worked, based on the bogus claim that the
provision of post-retirement benefits to anyone after 65 years of age
was prohibited by the Education Act -- something not stated
in the Act.[1] In May 2013, the supervisor also oversaw
the layoff of 200 teachers. Reports indicate that half of them have yet
to be called back.
The takeover of WECDSB was used to impose the
government's austerity agenda at the local level and to see how far the
government could go in eliminating
the say of local trustees -- something it is now looking to make
permanent by legislating new provincial bargaining arrangements.
This was all however
presented as a way to stop corruption and improve transparency at the
board level.
During the time they were under the control of a
supervisor, local trustees were eliminated from decision-making and
relegated to the sidelines to ask questions of the
imposed supervisor, Norbert Hartmann, about the decisions he was making.
New Management Model
On July 19, Minister of Education Liz Sandals, announced
that Supervisor Norbert Hartmann's tenure had come to
an end and that a new co-management model would be imposed on the
WECDSB. After thanking Hartman, Sandals stated: "A key accomplishment
during his
tenure was the June budget that will ensure the board's future
financial sustainability."
Balancing the budget of course means implementing the
cuts and new accounting guidelines imposed by the provincial government
in order to remove billions from education to pay the moneylenders who
own the debt. Local school boards more and more have had the provincial
deficit shifted onto their backs in the form of funding cuts and if
they do not find ways to implement the cuts, they are targeted for
takeover. Of course the governance problems of the school boards are
real, just as they are, although much worse, at the provincial level.
However, these problems are not addressed in order to provide more
empowerment and accountability, but to impose provincial dictate in the
name of accountability or transparency.
Sandal elaborated: "[Co-management] is the next phase in
supervision, and is the first step towards returning full power back to
the board. Under this model,
the chair and vice-chair will participate in the decision-making
process and provide advice to the supervisor with the intention to
build consensus on decisions
coming forward to the board. With a balanced budget in place, one of
the key priorities of the co-management team will be to help restore
public confidence
in the operations of the board.
"We have appointed Janine Griffore as the board's
supervisor to build on the work of Mr. Hartmann, who put the board on
more sound financial
footing."[2]
It appears that now that the austerity parameters to
eliminate funds from education have been imposed through the budget and
cuts brought in by Supervisor
Hartmann, the Chair and Vice-Chair of the Board will be consulted on
decisions, rather than the trustees, all in an attempt to overcome the
broad sentiment that
exists that locally-elected officials have been simply eliminated. The
Chair
and Vice-Chair will be in the inevitable position of having to
implement the austerity
parameters and this will be presented as a step towards restoring
public confidence in the WECDSB. These are precisely the type of
anti-social frauds that have
resulted in the lack of confidence and legitimacy for the government
and the austerity agenda as a whole.
Notes
1. See Ontario Political Forum, June 12,
2013 - Vol. 2, No. 40.
2. Janine Griffore was most recently the Director of
Education for the Conseil scolaire des écoles catholiques du
sud-ouest (CSDÉCSO) before being appointed
Assistant Deputy Minister of Education, French language, Aboriginal
Learning and Research Division.
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