Ontario’s two-tier bargaining system — two times the headache?

Just ask frustrated parents, who thought the threat of strikes was over once province-wide deals with teacher unions and CUPE support staff were announced, only to find out that local job action is still possible and is indeed happening in some schools.

Unions complain the process is cumbersome — and apparently costly — and needs reworking. Even the government acknowledges “further improvements” are in order.

Despite months of tough negotiations that led to the five deals, “there are still a number of central tables (deals) yet to be negotiated” with other support staff and small unions, said Paul Elliott, president of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation. The OSSTF has a ratified three-year provincial deal for its teachers, but last spring called strikes in three boards and this fall has launched job action in a few boards across the province — including Toronto — on local issues.

Now, locally, about 15 boards have deals in place with OSSTF teacher locals, “and more that are coming in on a daily basis, and I hope that trend is going to continue. But the process has become problematic, and the whole thing needs to be reviewed.”

The OSSTF also represents some 15,000 support staff in a number of boards, who don’t yet have provincial or local deals, who are also on a work-to-rule and are still under a threat of management docking their pay. To make things even more confusing, other support staff — represented by CUPE — have a provincial deal but no local deals.

“We are into the 18th month now, and it will probably be another six months until all deals are done. Something needs to be done about the efficiency of this,” said Elliott. “Central deals should not take this long to get agreement. Everyone is fatigued … and looking down the road, this process is slated to begin another year from now” given the three-year deals negotiated are retroactive and expire in 2017.

At Queen’s Park on Friday, Deputy Premier Deb Matthews conceded the new process has had its challenges.

“Everybody’s going to want to sit back and reflect on that and we’ve committed to doing that,” Matthews said. “There’s no question this was a really tough round of negotiations — it continues to be a tough round of negotiations,” said the minister who, as Treasury Board president, is the government’s point person on restraint measures. “Because not only are we totally changing the process . . . s we’re in a ‘net zero’ environment,” she said, referring to the government’s insistence that any gains in the contracts be offset by cuts elsewhere.

However, the government has come under fire for providing $2.5 million to three teacher unions to help cover their bargaining costs, money the Premier has said is “net zero” but unions say is not.

Progressive Conservative MPP Monte McNaughton (Lambton-Kent-Middlesex) said the new system has led to problems like the controversial payments, not to mention the tentative settlement with the Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario that enables teachers to duck crucial interviews with parents.

“Every parent and every student in the province knows there is total chaos in the education system. The two-tier bargaining system is broken,” said McNaughton, urging the Liberals to “go back to the drawing board.”

Ontario is believed to be the only jurisdiction with tiered bargaining that allows strikes not just provincially but also locally, which observers say may have been a way for the government to appease the unions into signing on to the new system, given their history of strong local bargaining.

But with Ontario centralizing much of education, including the funding, many argue it only makes sense to have the big items like salary, class size or prep time decided provincially. Bill 122, the School Boards Collective Bargaining Act, was ushered in in 2014.

Alessandra Fusco, spokesperson for Education Minister Liz Sandals, said this is the first round of bargaining and all parties agreed a new structure was needed. She said the fact that deals have been reached shows “successful negotiations (under the legislation) are possible even in times of fiscal restraint. The legislation establishes a clear framework for negotiations by creating a two-tier process with legally defined roles for all parties involved.”

“. . . Upon the conclusion of this full round of negotiations, our government has committed to consulting with all of our education partners to seek further improvements to the framework so that we may strengthen relationships.

Margot Trevelyan, former labour relations and governance director for the Ministry of Education during the time bargaining shifted from local to central, said that before, there were up to 500 collective agreements reached throughout the province and the problem was that “unions would negotiate agreements at a board that was relatively wealthy — York Region, for example, because of its growing enrolment — and get a good deal their members needed, and then try to pattern that across the province with other boards that might not be able to afford it.”

So one advantage of the new system is “it avoids that ratcheting up.” It also gives school boards a collective strength, whereas in the past boards in the north or rural areas wouldn’t have the same power as the Toronto District School Board, the country’s largest, even though they faced local unions with the same provincial backing.

“It provides everyone a more equal presence at the provincial table,” she said, adding “there’s frankly no question that Ontario school boards or unions are ever going to go back to local bargaining. I think we’ve passed that point.”

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As for two times the strike potential, while it’s “very off-putting to people, get over one strike and face another,” back in the 1970s before teachers had the right to strike, they would instead submit resignation letters en masse.

“And under (Mike Harris’ Conservative government), you had local bargaining but provincial strikes,” she added. “I don’t think this (new system) makes any difference in the propensity for strikes.”

Terri Preston, CUPE’s chief negotiator for Ontario’s education workers, believes there is “potential as a process, there are just a lot of things that need to be ironed out.”

“I think everybody has learned things from how it’s worked, I think there are a lot of ideas for improvement,” she said, calling it “cumbersome.”

Determining what was to be negotiated centrally versus locally took months, and “there was some frustration in terms of the ability to get consecutive dates of bargaining” given the number of bargaining tables going on at the same time, and she believes the teaching unions were given preference.

“A $5 increase to the boot allowance — does it need to be talked about at a provincial bargaining table? Because of this concept of net-zero, anything monetary ended up at the central table, whether or not an individual board had the ability to pay for it. It took things away from local tables that could usually be sorted out within existing budgets” and kept big issues, like workplace violence, away from central tables where she believed they rightfully belonged.

“It slowed down things centrally, because there were so many issues at the central table that it was very difficult to have meaningful discussions.”

She called the whole process “gruelling for everyone involved.”

Elliott said for frustrated parents should know “we share their frustration. We share the frustration that this has taken so long. I think we are all in the same boat, and we all hope that things move quickly from here on in.

“I hope there’s a full review of this process that comes up with a solution for all parties.”

Meanwhile, on Sunday public elementary teachers began voting on a 3-year deal reached last week with the province and school boards' association that provides the same salary increase as other teacher unions, and strikes a committee to look at concerns about class size. It also allows teachers to avoid meetings with parents over fall progress reports, which was previously reported by the Star as a compromise between the union and government in exchange for teachers completing full fall report cards.

The deal also provides $600,000 from the government to the union to cover the costs of professional development. A source told the Star that money is akin to the controversial funds provided to the other three teacher unions to cover bargaining costs, but "just a different name."