[Saturday news links below. Keep scrolling, but you might want to read this too...]
How odd to meet over an educational crisis during the summer holidays! However our OECTA TSU [Toronto Secondary Unit] and TECT [Toronto Elementary Catholic Teachers] membership did just that on August 22. Meeting with us starting at 1:45 in Toronto's Roy Thompson were OECTA President Kevin O'Dwyer, and Provincial CB [Collective Bargaining] Staff Officer David Church. Also TSU and TECT President's Rene Jansen and Mario Bernardo. The meeting was chaired by Doug McCarthy. Doug did an excellent job of using Robert's Rules of Order, to ensure that everybody had a chance to speak and to be heard in an orderly manner. I'm sure all of us who were there are grateful for a very interesting, informative and thought provoking meeting, regardless of how we might each feel about many of the OECTA PDT MOU [Ontario English Catholic Teachers Professional Discussion Table Memo of Understanding] issues discussed!
You should find the official OECTA reports on the meeting, soon I would hope, at one or all of these sites:
OECTA Provincial: http://www.oecta.on.ca/wps/portal
OECTA TSU: http://www.tsuoecta.org/
OECTA TECT: http://www.tect.org/
In the meantime, I will provide a few supplementary notes and personal observations from the meeting that you might find of interest. These are by no means official or complete. Be sure to visit the other websites above to learn a lot more about the OECTA PDT MOU terms and process, questions and explanations, etc. etc. etc. from the meeting reports. Here is what I saw, felt and heard:
Our TSU-TECT questions and concerns mostly focused on the PDT decision making and ratification process. I understand the members at the Sault Ste. Marie meeting last month focused more on the PDT terms, details and what they meant. Our members were certainly concerned about that too, but the questions were often more individual member orientated than general PDT term or process specific. At any rate the bigger picture will be of more general interest for our purposes here.
President O'Dwyer's and David Church's reviewed the PDT processes in detail to explain them to our members. Suffice to say here that it was acknowledged provincial will be reviewing the OECTA PDT decision making, ratification and communication process used in 2008 and 2012 on a go forward basis.
OECTA Provincial has decided to endorse the NDP candidate Ms. Fife in the Kitchener Waterloo by-election, along with the OSSTF, ETFO, + AEFO. The local Waterloo Catholic unit is remaining neutral in the race. No decision has been made yet on OECTA's possible involvement in Vaughan.
TSU President Rene Jansen and TECT President Mario Bernardo are both on record as having voted against the MOU at the COP [Council of Presidents]. Provincial will not reveal the complete list of how all the various local presidents voted until the first weekend of November. At that time the minutes from the COP meet will be approved, and the information released.
President Jansen invited our members who would like to get involved in changing the procedures to apply for our TSU legislation committee, with an eye towards submitting motions to that effect at the Spring 2013 Provincial AGM. There are still openings on the committee, so if interested I'd suggest calling the TSU office asap!
The TCDSB got a great deal out of the OECTA PDT MOU since it removes our sick day bank and retirement gratuity, a long term TCDSB goal. Although the trustees voted on approving the MOU nothing has actually been received in writing yet by OECTA to make it official. Hmmm.
The OCSTA [Ontario Catholic School Trustees Association] drew a line just short of the Principals and VP's receiving 3 unpaid PD days, like the teachers, to help eliminate the grid freeze. Otherwise they were intransigent and walked out of the OECTA PDT meeting on July 4th before the MOU was signed. They insisted upon class size caps being removed, mandatory stay after school extracurricular and school PD meetings, and a claw back in benefits, among other demands. They were apposed to fair hire language and teacher professional assessment concessions as an unacceptable violation of their management rights. Wow! Imagine that! And it's all been confirmed!
As an interesting side note, the 3 unpaid PD days are days off. Call them Dalton Days or whatever. Even the Principals and VP's won't be paid for those days, and have no right to tell you to be at school. The 3 days will fall before Thanksgiving, Christmas, and March Break during the 2013-14 school year.
OECTA has asked our lawyer Paul Cavalluzo to review rough drafts of the Liberal "Putting Student's First" legislation due to very serious, unanticipated concerns. The Liberal government is now removing our basic labour rights by tampering with the Ontario Labour Act. OECTA will then carefully consider our next move, after hearing back from Paul.
Should the legislation not pass, it's unlikely anybody will be getting a 5.5% raise. It's unclear if our OECTA members will get back the concessions made in our PDT deal, as per the terms of our last contract, or even whether the MOU then perhaps becomes null and void. Legal minds are looking the ramifications over very carefully, and nothing is certain yet. We'll have to wait to hear more from OECTA Provincial.
MOU ratification process at the meeting. Fair enough. We don't get to vote on it as the procedures stand, so it is in effect a done deal. However, it also seemed to me that a lot of our members were unaware of another very important issue. PDT agreements are now very much a question of provincial verses local collective bargaining. That is a very big picture often missed in trying to contextualize our concerns. It's changing everything!
Since our Catholic trustees surrendered the right to local taxation during the Harris Years, despite an OECTA constitutional challenge, the provincial government is now our defacto paymaster. We must also recognize that OECTA agreed last December at COP to empower our table team to follow our 2008 PDT process for this round of talks. It had worked quite well before. However, the change in the Liberal PDT process, and government demands were suddenly changed on us this spring.
While it is easy to vilify others, everyone was caught by surprise with the Liberals about turn in their previous consultative and co-operative relationship with our teacher unions. It has been very challenging for OECTA to keep up with all the changes, and no matter how one feels, nothing is black and white. The issues are just not that clear cut or easy.
Although a lot of serious questions do have to be asked, please don't expect any easy answers, nor expect simple finger pointing to suffice. We face a lot of very crucial challenges now, and in the years ahead. Everything, politically and contract wise has suddenly become a WHOLE lot more complicated, and nothing is certain anymore.
In discussions after the meeting, it was very clear to me that a lot of us seriously doubt that the Liberals consider teacher support necessary anymore for their election success. This is a pretty big gamble on their part. Perhaps the soft conservative vote will shift over to the Liberal side with their "Hudak light" version of teacher union bashing. However, so far the polling is anything but certain.
Many members seemed to agree that we need to remind the Liberals we are here, in no uncertain terms. As always OECTA supports the most educational friendly political candidates. Of course, that does not mean now, just like before, that we always support the Liberals. There was even speculation that, as when Conservative Education Minister Don Johnson targeted teachers during the Harris years, it is imperative we strike back. Hence the increasing calls for a combined union effort against the Minister Education in her riding of Etobicoke Lakeshore during the next provincial election.
If the general consensus is that the PDT MOU deal was made with a gun to our head, in disregard of our many efforts to help Laurel Broten and the Liberal party in years past, then perhaps the decision will be that it is not wise to let the Liberals think they can just write us off and treat us with such blatant disregard. It will be very interesting to see how this about face in our support for Ms. Broten and the party unfolds in the high stake political gamble the minority Liberal government are taking.
Of course it's a dangerous gamble for us to take too. Should Tim Hudak's Conservatives form the next government, we may very well just have "cut off our nose to spite our face", as the saying goes. Possibly the Liberals are even thinking that as they plan their moves, and are squeezing us between a "rock and a hard place?" A lot more hard political discussion and thought will have to go into whatever we do next politically, that's for sure, but in the words of Bob Dylan, "the times they are a changing". Pardon all the phrases, but allow me one last one here. It's certainly a lot of "food for thought."
Provincial seemed to be acknowledged that the OECTA PDT communications with our members since last June requires a complete review. I don't believe the virtual news blackout worked for the best, unless one wants the raucous, inchoate anger often witnessed at Wednesday's meeting. I've often lamented the lack of information from OECTA over the course of my summer blogs. I strongly believe it's resulted in a lot of suspicion and confusion.
I once again encourage you, dear reader, to avail yourself of the news links you find here on my blog and elsewhere, including of course the info on the official OECTA websites. As members we need to educate ourselves about all the many underlining PDT, structural, procedural, political, economic, labour and various union issues at play to try to really understand at any great depth what has/is/will be happening. We are professionals. We can and will think for ourselves.
There has been a very interesting, complex debate raging this summer about all the different PDT issues, coming from a wide variety of different points of view. OECTA has not been very pro-active outside of the small handful of documents that were made available to us on our provincial website private member's only area. Everything else that's been written and said can't just be considered rubbish or manipulation! The larger debate and our member feelings of confidence and empowerment will and are developing in any number of directions with or without our little handful of OECTA provincial info pieces. One remains silent at their own peril!
Both OECTA provincial and our TSU communication plans remain of great interest to me on a go forward basis. There is a new media reality that has been creeping up on us and is now even threatening to overtake our old tried and true methods of communicating with our members like in years past.
I have always advocated for the new technology of media, be it by Twitter or this blog, as excellent methods to communicate with you, the member's who I represent as your TSU 3rd VP. I believe they help me to be accountable and transparent in communicating with you, much more so than was possible before. Of course, more blogs and Tweets alone are not going to solve all our problems. However, I'm certain that if our unit was less resistant, cautious, control orientated and often downright unaccepting of these new mediums, rather than let's say relying on monthly or bi-monthly hard copy Highlight's newsletters, official office only emails, notices, and little attended public meetings, my blog would never have been of as much interest, nor taken off like it has since a year ago last April.
I welcome the 10,000 new reader visits to my blogsite this summer. I am honoured to be able to provide you with quick, easy access to info about what's been going on, in face of an otherwise near OECTA void on the information front, even if my blog is unofficial in nature. I hope that rather than uselessly try to condemn, or ban these type of useful tools for sharing publicly available information and materials, which are all over the place anyways, we can begin to accept and use them more widely, as a part of our communication plans. Otherwise history will not be on our side, as far as the new communication's revolution is concerned. In maybe other ways too!
Anyway, I begin to ramble. Please keep checking the official OECTA sites. I will posting news links that I hope you find valuable to be aware and wise about all the PDT MOU talk swirling about us. Some new links follow below:
In the News:
OSSTF invite to Queen's Park protest Tusday August 28 12:00 to 1:30:
http://www.osstf.on.ca/upcoming-aug-23-2012
Hudak confirms Conservatives will help Liberal's pass legislation: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/ontario-pcs-will-help-liberals-pass-bill-forcing-controversial-teachers-contract/article4496844/
Liberals ask for promise in writing: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/story/2012/08/24/ontario-teacher-bill-pcs254.html
Huron Superior Catholic board agrees to MOU: http://www.sootoday.com/content/news/details.asp?c=46244
OSSTF President denounces "anti-worker" legislation: http://www.osstf.on.ca/MR-Aug-23-2012
Legal firm of Hicks-Morley reports on new legislation and consequences for school boards: http://www.hicksmorley.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1339&catid=6
An excellent polling study and party prospectus for Kitchener-Waterloo By-Election:
http://www.therecord.com/news/article/787105--fortress-witmer-under-attack-will-it-crumble
More news links added below and to follow! Be in the know!
How odd to meet over an educational crisis during the summer holidays! However our OECTA TSU [Toronto Secondary Unit] and TECT [Toronto Elementary Catholic Teachers] membership did just that on August 22. Meeting with us starting at 1:45 in Toronto's Roy Thompson were OECTA President Kevin O'Dwyer, and Provincial CB [Collective Bargaining] Staff Officer David Church. Also TSU and TECT President's Rene Jansen and Mario Bernardo. The meeting was chaired by Doug McCarthy. Doug did an excellent job of using Robert's Rules of Order, to ensure that everybody had a chance to speak and to be heard in an orderly manner. I'm sure all of us who were there are grateful for a very interesting, informative and thought provoking meeting, regardless of how we might each feel about many of the OECTA PDT MOU [Ontario English Catholic Teachers Professional Discussion Table Memo of Understanding] issues discussed!
You should find the official OECTA reports on the meeting, soon I would hope, at one or all of these sites:
OECTA Provincial: http://www.oecta.on.ca/wps/portal
OECTA TSU: http://www.tsuoecta.org/
OECTA TECT: http://www.tect.org/
In the meantime, I will provide a few supplementary notes and personal observations from the meeting that you might find of interest. These are by no means official or complete. Be sure to visit the other websites above to learn a lot more about the OECTA PDT MOU terms and process, questions and explanations, etc. etc. etc. from the meeting reports. Here is what I saw, felt and heard:
Our TSU-TECT questions and concerns mostly focused on the PDT decision making and ratification process. I understand the members at the Sault Ste. Marie meeting last month focused more on the PDT terms, details and what they meant. Our members were certainly concerned about that too, but the questions were often more individual member orientated than general PDT term or process specific. At any rate the bigger picture will be of more general interest for our purposes here.
President O'Dwyer's and David Church's reviewed the PDT processes in detail to explain them to our members. Suffice to say here that it was acknowledged provincial will be reviewing the OECTA PDT decision making, ratification and communication process used in 2008 and 2012 on a go forward basis.
OECTA Provincial has decided to endorse the NDP candidate Ms. Fife in the Kitchener Waterloo by-election, along with the OSSTF, ETFO, + AEFO. The local Waterloo Catholic unit is remaining neutral in the race. No decision has been made yet on OECTA's possible involvement in Vaughan.
TSU President Rene Jansen and TECT President Mario Bernardo are both on record as having voted against the MOU at the COP [Council of Presidents]. Provincial will not reveal the complete list of how all the various local presidents voted until the first weekend of November. At that time the minutes from the COP meet will be approved, and the information released.
President Jansen invited our members who would like to get involved in changing the procedures to apply for our TSU legislation committee, with an eye towards submitting motions to that effect at the Spring 2013 Provincial AGM. There are still openings on the committee, so if interested I'd suggest calling the TSU office asap!
The TCDSB got a great deal out of the OECTA PDT MOU since it removes our sick day bank and retirement gratuity, a long term TCDSB goal. Although the trustees voted on approving the MOU nothing has actually been received in writing yet by OECTA to make it official. Hmmm.
The OCSTA [Ontario Catholic School Trustees Association] drew a line just short of the Principals and VP's receiving 3 unpaid PD days, like the teachers, to help eliminate the grid freeze. Otherwise they were intransigent and walked out of the OECTA PDT meeting on July 4th before the MOU was signed. They insisted upon class size caps being removed, mandatory stay after school extracurricular and school PD meetings, and a claw back in benefits, among other demands. They were apposed to fair hire language and teacher professional assessment concessions as an unacceptable violation of their management rights. Wow! Imagine that! And it's all been confirmed!
As an interesting side note, the 3 unpaid PD days are days off. Call them Dalton Days or whatever. Even the Principals and VP's won't be paid for those days, and have no right to tell you to be at school. The 3 days will fall before Thanksgiving, Christmas, and March Break during the 2013-14 school year.
OECTA has asked our lawyer Paul Cavalluzo to review rough drafts of the Liberal "Putting Student's First" legislation due to very serious, unanticipated concerns. The Liberal government is now removing our basic labour rights by tampering with the Ontario Labour Act. OECTA will then carefully consider our next move, after hearing back from Paul.
Should the legislation not pass, it's unlikely anybody will be getting a 5.5% raise. It's unclear if our OECTA members will get back the concessions made in our PDT deal, as per the terms of our last contract, or even whether the MOU then perhaps becomes null and void. Legal minds are looking the ramifications over very carefully, and nothing is certain yet. We'll have to wait to hear more from OECTA Provincial.
MOU ratification process at the meeting. Fair enough. We don't get to vote on it as the procedures stand, so it is in effect a done deal. However, it also seemed to me that a lot of our members were unaware of another very important issue. PDT agreements are now very much a question of provincial verses local collective bargaining. That is a very big picture often missed in trying to contextualize our concerns. It's changing everything!
Since our Catholic trustees surrendered the right to local taxation during the Harris Years, despite an OECTA constitutional challenge, the provincial government is now our defacto paymaster. We must also recognize that OECTA agreed last December at COP to empower our table team to follow our 2008 PDT process for this round of talks. It had worked quite well before. However, the change in the Liberal PDT process, and government demands were suddenly changed on us this spring.
While it is easy to vilify others, everyone was caught by surprise with the Liberals about turn in their previous consultative and co-operative relationship with our teacher unions. It has been very challenging for OECTA to keep up with all the changes, and no matter how one feels, nothing is black and white. The issues are just not that clear cut or easy.
Although a lot of serious questions do have to be asked, please don't expect any easy answers, nor expect simple finger pointing to suffice. We face a lot of very crucial challenges now, and in the years ahead. Everything, politically and contract wise has suddenly become a WHOLE lot more complicated, and nothing is certain anymore.
In discussions after the meeting, it was very clear to me that a lot of us seriously doubt that the Liberals consider teacher support necessary anymore for their election success. This is a pretty big gamble on their part. Perhaps the soft conservative vote will shift over to the Liberal side with their "Hudak light" version of teacher union bashing. However, so far the polling is anything but certain.
Many members seemed to agree that we need to remind the Liberals we are here, in no uncertain terms. As always OECTA supports the most educational friendly political candidates. Of course, that does not mean now, just like before, that we always support the Liberals. There was even speculation that, as when Conservative Education Minister Don Johnson targeted teachers during the Harris years, it is imperative we strike back. Hence the increasing calls for a combined union effort against the Minister Education in her riding of Etobicoke Lakeshore during the next provincial election.
If the general consensus is that the PDT MOU deal was made with a gun to our head, in disregard of our many efforts to help Laurel Broten and the Liberal party in years past, then perhaps the decision will be that it is not wise to let the Liberals think they can just write us off and treat us with such blatant disregard. It will be very interesting to see how this about face in our support for Ms. Broten and the party unfolds in the high stake political gamble the minority Liberal government are taking.
Of course it's a dangerous gamble for us to take too. Should Tim Hudak's Conservatives form the next government, we may very well just have "cut off our nose to spite our face", as the saying goes. Possibly the Liberals are even thinking that as they plan their moves, and are squeezing us between a "rock and a hard place?" A lot more hard political discussion and thought will have to go into whatever we do next politically, that's for sure, but in the words of Bob Dylan, "the times they are a changing". Pardon all the phrases, but allow me one last one here. It's certainly a lot of "food for thought."
Provincial seemed to be acknowledged that the OECTA PDT communications with our members since last June requires a complete review. I don't believe the virtual news blackout worked for the best, unless one wants the raucous, inchoate anger often witnessed at Wednesday's meeting. I've often lamented the lack of information from OECTA over the course of my summer blogs. I strongly believe it's resulted in a lot of suspicion and confusion.
I once again encourage you, dear reader, to avail yourself of the news links you find here on my blog and elsewhere, including of course the info on the official OECTA websites. As members we need to educate ourselves about all the many underlining PDT, structural, procedural, political, economic, labour and various union issues at play to try to really understand at any great depth what has/is/will be happening. We are professionals. We can and will think for ourselves.
There has been a very interesting, complex debate raging this summer about all the different PDT issues, coming from a wide variety of different points of view. OECTA has not been very pro-active outside of the small handful of documents that were made available to us on our provincial website private member's only area. Everything else that's been written and said can't just be considered rubbish or manipulation! The larger debate and our member feelings of confidence and empowerment will and are developing in any number of directions with or without our little handful of OECTA provincial info pieces. One remains silent at their own peril!
Both OECTA provincial and our TSU communication plans remain of great interest to me on a go forward basis. There is a new media reality that has been creeping up on us and is now even threatening to overtake our old tried and true methods of communicating with our members like in years past.
I have always advocated for the new technology of media, be it by Twitter or this blog, as excellent methods to communicate with you, the member's who I represent as your TSU 3rd VP. I believe they help me to be accountable and transparent in communicating with you, much more so than was possible before. Of course, more blogs and Tweets alone are not going to solve all our problems. However, I'm certain that if our unit was less resistant, cautious, control orientated and often downright unaccepting of these new mediums, rather than let's say relying on monthly or bi-monthly hard copy Highlight's newsletters, official office only emails, notices, and little attended public meetings, my blog would never have been of as much interest, nor taken off like it has since a year ago last April.
I welcome the 10,000 new reader visits to my blogsite this summer. I am honoured to be able to provide you with quick, easy access to info about what's been going on, in face of an otherwise near OECTA void on the information front, even if my blog is unofficial in nature. I hope that rather than uselessly try to condemn, or ban these type of useful tools for sharing publicly available information and materials, which are all over the place anyways, we can begin to accept and use them more widely, as a part of our communication plans. Otherwise history will not be on our side, as far as the new communication's revolution is concerned. In maybe other ways too!
Anyway, I begin to ramble. Please keep checking the official OECTA sites. I will posting news links that I hope you find valuable to be aware and wise about all the PDT MOU talk swirling about us. Some new links follow below:
In the News:
OSSTF invite to Queen's Park protest Tusday August 28 12:00 to 1:30:
http://www.osstf.on.ca/upcoming-aug-23-2012
Hudak confirms Conservatives will help Liberal's pass legislation: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/ontario-pcs-will-help-liberals-pass-bill-forcing-controversial-teachers-contract/article4496844/
Liberals ask for promise in writing: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/story/2012/08/24/ontario-teacher-bill-pcs254.html
Huron Superior Catholic board agrees to MOU: http://www.sootoday.com/content/news/details.asp?c=46244
OSSTF President denounces "anti-worker" legislation: http://www.osstf.on.ca/MR-Aug-23-2012
Legal firm of Hicks-Morley reports on new legislation and consequences for school boards: http://www.hicksmorley.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1339&catid=6
An excellent polling study and party prospectus for Kitchener-Waterloo By-Election:
http://www.therecord.com/news/article/787105--fortress-witmer-under-attack-will-it-crumble
More news links added below and to follow! Be in the know!
