Bargaining is Group Work (Collective Bargaining)

As this is being written, only a handful of settlements have been negotiated. All  of  them  are   excellent,  despite the  very  major  challenge  that  this year’s   unusual  bargaining  scenario being presented. It is still early days, however, and in many locals progress is extremely slow.

In  collective  bargaining,  there  is  no  real downtime. The union is always either in negotiations or in some phase of preparing for bargaining. The process of enforcing the collective agreements is also continuous and runs parallel to bargaining, and in another month or so we will  enter  a particularly critical phase in that process – ensuring that workplace realities are adjusted to  conform to  the  newly-negotiated contract language. All of this requires a small army of union members who, at various points in the process this year, put their lives on hold to advance the collective good. It is worth having both a retrospective and prospective look at their work.

Training ensures members are ready 

Successful  negotiations hinge on an informed and engaged membership, including members who are willing to either sit on the negotiating team or be part of the local’s collective bargaining committee structure. Shortly after the ink on the last collective agreement was dry – less than three years ago – ETFO developed an extensive training program. During  the  2007-2008  school  year, over  400 members of local negotiating teams and local collective bargaining committees participated (Many of these individuals also serve as local executive members.) The training included two provincial  conferences, six occasional teacher regional  meetings,  and  training  sessions  in ETFO’s 66 locals. These were all in addition to other long-standing programs focused on negotiating, such as the women’s collective bargaining training which is offered each year.

Finally, in those locals that have stewards, collective bargaining content was prominent in steward training sessions. That is important for two reasons. It is stewards who do the heavy lifting during bargaining – they field the questions, distribute  the  information,  encourage  their overworked colleagues to come out to meetings, and serve as the link to the local executive. As well, typically, they are the pool  from which tomorrow’s bargainers are drawn.

As we moved into actual negotiations in the fall, this extended group carried out its work – at the bargaining table, in the caucus rooms, and in the staff rooms. The arbitrary deadlines and odd edicts  coming out of the Ministry of Education meant even greater disruption than bargaining usually does.  Local  presidents  in particular had to rearrange their personal lives on short notice in order to attend meetings in Toronto.

In bargaining years, interest in the process peaks, which is important for both continuity and renewal. As  one indication, an upcoming collective  bargaining  conference  for  women members is currently well oversubscribed, with an unprecedented lengthy waiting list. That is a healthy sign for ETFO’s future.

Enforcing  agreements takes  teamwork
For unions, bargaining builds human capital. And it is this large pool of ETFO human capital – the local executive members, the bargaining team and committee members, and the stewards – who will be at the forefront of enforcing the new collective agreements. As this is being written we do not yet know the full contents of those collective agreements, but we know what a few of the key provisions will be. It has always been the case that the unglamourous task of enforcing collective agreements is more difficult than actually bargaining them. In this round, that maxim is truer than ever.

The Ontario Public School Boards’ Association (OPSBA) came into bargaining with a plan to roll back some of the rights that teachers had achieved in the previous round of bargaining. This was quite evident in some of the contract language – such as the proposal that principals control the use of any additional negotiated preparation time – it tabled during the provincial discussions. The fact that OPSBA did not succeed in these attempts does not mean that individual school boards will give up this and other fights.

When your employer comes after your collective agreement – and the odds are that it will – a great many individuals at the local level will be there to help you defend it. Hundreds of them have spent the past two years poring over contract language and gaining an understanding of its nuances.

There are endless external pressures to increase both the length of your working day and the level of intensity with which you must work. Unfortunately, the provincial government has become wedded to a very narrow and  unproven measure of  student “success.” The quest for improved EQAO scores has driven the assessment  juggernaut that continues to crush teachers and students in its path. These many new initiatives create both a political and a practical problem. At the political level, ETFO is active in the numerous committees, stakeholder meetings, roundtables, and workgroups the Ministry of Education is so fond of convening. At all  of  these, the union has taken a strong position with respect to the effectiveness (or lack thereof ) of various initiatives and the implications for teacher workload.

On a practical level, the best defenses against workload creep are strong collective agreement language  and the willingness of locals and of individual members to enforce collective agreement rights. The hard work done at the local level over the past two years means that we are well-positioned as we move into the next phase of bargaining.