Ontario’s public elementary and secondary teacher unions have filed a complaint with the labour board, saying provincial payouts to their Catholic counterparts are unfair.

The Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario and the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation say the Liberal government “engaged in coercion and reprisals, and discriminated against ETFO and OSSTF members.”

They allege that’s because the two unions “successfully challenged the violation of their members’ constitutionally protected rights under Bill 115,” ETFO said in a written release.

Bill 115 was the 2012 legislation that forced contracts on elementary and secondary teachers, contracts based on a deal agreed to by the Ontario English Catholic Teachers’ Association.

It was recently revealed that the government settled a grievance based on the next round of bargaining, in 2014, and is giving many Catholic teachers a $2,000 payout — to a total of $31 million — to make up for salary increases that were delayed because of sluggish negotiations.

But the public school teacher unions say they were told by the government that their members were not allowed to grieve the 2014 salary delay.

They have accused the government of bargaining in bad faith in 2014 “by consistently representing that all four of Ontario’s teacher unions would be receiving substantially identical financial settlements for their 2014-2017 collective agreements.”

“These recent payouts are, essentially, very expensive thank-you cards from the Liberal government to unions that agreed to major financial concessions during 2012 and gave public legitimacy to a law, Bill 115, that the government used to impose those same concessions on others,” said Sam Hammond, president of the elementary teachers’ union.

The elementary and secondary teachers’ unions, among others, won a court challenge to Bill 115, in which the 2012 law was deemed to have violated their constitutional rights. The secondary teachers’ union worked out a $50-million settlement with the government, but the elementary teachers have yet to reach one.

The government has said the Catholic teacher payouts, and others in the works, including to the province’s principals, are to mitigate future risk and challenges from the 2014 grievances, but the two public teacher unions called that a “smoke screen.”

Secondary teacher union President Harvey Bischof called the government’s dealings “unfair and dishonest.”

The Catholic teachers’ union was upset when the 2014-15 school year started without a contract, with the government extending their existing agreements as negotiations were underway, which led union locals to later launch grievances.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

But the extended agreements were simply a continuation of the 2012 deal when the Catholic teachers had actually agreed to the salary grid delay.

Salary grids are based on education and experience, and teachers move “up” it as they build years of service. Annual salary increases boost the grid overall.