CUPE 4148

Jul 30, 2015 – Guelph Mercury

Premier Kathleen Wynne and Education Minister Liz Sandals claim they have jump-started negotiations with teachers’ unions. But readers should not be duped by political theatre.

Sandals has already demonstrated her three-step approach to bargaining that eliminates her need to negotiate. Specifically, in stage one, she fails to pay attention. She revealed this strategy when she repeatedly said she did not understand and was perplexed by teacher labour strife, including secondary school strikes in Durham, Peel and Rainbow districts. She admitted to not being sure why elementary teachers left the bargaining table. “It just seems to be a general desire to have a strike,” she mused.

In stage two, she waited out chaos. Rather than engage in collective bargaining, she let work stoppage continue, frustrations rise, and dissatisfaction peak. Accusations, blaming and mudslinging prevailed. The “can’t-do-it-can-do-it” flip-flop school boards did over sending home report cards serves as an example.

Finally, Sandals plays her trump card: she ushers in back-to-work legislation as she did in Durham, Peel and Rainbow districts. By using the power imbalance government has over public sector employees, Sandals undermines collective bargaining. She does not have to negotiate in earnest; she does not have to work to find mutual agreement.

Sandals’ three-step approach denies basic tenants of democracy, namely grassroots voice and engagement. It also forsakes consensus and forces compliance. In reality, front line workers like teachers should contribute to the determination of their working conditions — they add real value to the enterprise. And subjugation breeds discontent.

The controversy with public elementary teachers has centred on preserving time-honoured provisions.

First, teachers want to maintain their ability to prioritize and self-direct their work when not instructing students. Professional autonomy, the life force of pride and creativity, is at stake.

Secondly, elementary teachers oppose the removal of all class size language from all collective agreements. Teachers know without class size provisions in collective agreements, class sizes will soar and the quality of each individual student’s learning experience will necessarily diminish.

Thirdly, teachers want fair and transparent hiring and staffing procedures. Recent legislation added standardization and objectivity to selection practices. Management has demanded the deletion of all hiring and staffing language from all collective agreements and wants relevant legislation repealed.

Teachers will stand steadfast in their commitment to preserve public education regardless of the odds against them.

We can only hope that Sandals will take her portfolio seriously and recognize that true labour peace comes from bargaining in good faith.

Doug Cook (an elementary teacher at Willow Road Public School, Guelph)

Kitchener

Follow the link below to listen to the CBC interview with Terri Preston, CUPE Ontario School Board Coordinating Committee Chair.

http://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/universally-ignored-educational-assistants-also-face-violence-in-classrooms-jan-22-2015-1.2927800

CUPE Local 4148 conducted a survey of our Educational Assistants and Early Childhood Educators earlier this year. Following are the results:

Stats are based on the 77 surveys returned to the executive. Almost 80% of the respondents reported being subjected to an act of student aggression in the past two years. More than half of these respondents report these acts occurring on “almost a daily basis” and almost 40% of the remaining respondents experienced student aggression and violence more than three times in the past 2 years. In addition, 70% of all of the respondents report witnessing an act of student aggression and/or violence on “almost a daily basis”.

Most of our educational assistants are assigned to 4 to 6 special needs students at once. With the Liberal Party cuts to funding for Special Education, 27 of our full-time (6 hr) E.A.s have been bumped to part-time and 13 part-time E.A.s have been laid off despite the fact that the level of student needs has remained constant.

By Haley Ritchie
Metro
August 5, 2015 Updated : August 5, 2015 | 6:50 pm

 Labour talks between teachers and school boards have been in the spotlight for months, but support staff working in schools say they’re tired of being sidelined.

 That’s the message Sherry Wallace, vice president of CUPE Local 2357, wants parents to hear as her union, representing other education workers, goes into bargaining.

 “The government is constantly talking about the teachers but for some reason they feel support staff aren’t as much of an issue,” said Wallace. “We’re constantly under the radar.”

 CUPE represents a range of 1,500 non-teacher workers at the Ottawa-Catholic School Board, including educational assistants, early childhood educators, office administrators and library technicians. They often make half of what teachers are paid, and most are 10-month contract employees who are laid off in the summer months.

 The group hasn’t had a contract since August of last year and are still trying to negotiate salaries, benefits and safety concerns around working conditions. 

 CUPE sought help from a provincial conciliator last week after they were told central bargaining dates wouldn’t take place until after the school year began. Education Minister Liz Sandals said the government is committed to reaching a solution.

Wallace said workers feel sidelined.

 “We want parents to know we’re part of the school system. We don’t want to go on strike but we do want to matter in this bargaining process,” she said.
Wallace said over the 11 years she’s been helping special needs students in the classroom cutbacks have doubled or tripled the workload.

 “If we’re caring for four or five children we’re just putting out fires and making sure everybody is safe. We’re just coping. It’s no longer about that social and emotional learning that students require,” she said.
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SELENA ROSS  The Globe and Mail
Published Monday, Jul. 27, 2015 8:33PM EDT
Last updated Monday, Jul. 27, 2015 11:16PM EDT

The union representing Ontario school support staff signalled on Monday that contract talks are going badly and said it will not rule out strike action in September – a move that could keep many schools closed for health and safety reasons, even if teachers stay on the job.

The Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), whose 55,000 education workers include custodians and tradespeople, requested a conciliator on Monday.

The union would need to ask the conciliator for a “no board report” in order to be in strike position by September. Terri Preston, chair of the bargaining committee for CUPE’s central talks with the Ministry of Education, said the union is not planning to request the report right away, but it hopes to force the province to set more bargaining dates than the two it has scheduled in August.

CUPE is well behind the teachers’ unions in the progress of its talks. The two sides have only exchanged opening proposals so far, Ms. Preston said, and the next two bargaining dates are scheduled for late August.

“There’s a level of frustration with the talks,” she said. “There’s a real perception that [the support workers’] bargaining is being seen as less important than others, even though we’re all in the school boards together.”

In a statement, the Ministry of Education said it is committed to setting bargaining dates as soon as possible with CUPE and the other unions.

In past labour disruptions by CUPE school staff, school closures were decided on a case-by-case basis at the board level, said ministry spokeswoman Nilani Logeswaran.
CUPE school workers also include educational assistants, special-education and literacy educators, school secretaries, administrative staff and most of the province’s early childhood educators.

Chuck Hay, an executive superintendent at the Toronto District School Board, said in June that the board may need to close schools for health and safety reasons if CUPE staff stop working at any point.

The union leadership will meet at the end of August to review progress and decide whether to continue bargaining as planned or take other action, Ms. Preston said. Two more bargaining dates have been set in September.

The CUPE workers’ contracts expired, along with the teachers’ contracts, last August.
The union’s negotiations with the province have gone less smoothly than the teachers’ bargaining ever since. Under Ontario’s new two-tier bargaining system, big financial items are discussed at a central table with the province and the association of school boards, while smaller items are discussed locally with each school board. Bargaining began by determining which issues should be addressed at which table, a process that took months for the teachers’ unions.

However, CUPE and its negotiating partners could not agree on how to divide their talks, which sent the question to the Ontario Labour Relations Board. A ruling determined the division in late June. By that point, CUPE negotiators were hoping for a slew of bargaining dates over the summer to help make up for the delay, Ms. Preston said. “We’ve had two dates for bargaining and now nothing until the end of August again,” she said. “So we were really surprised that that’s all we were given.”

The current, very public battle between education workers and the Ontario government involves more than just the teachers. There are 55,000 education support workers province-wide who are also included in this battle. We are the caretakers and maintenance personnel, the secretaries, the early childhood educators, and the educational assistants employed at Ontario’s schools and school boards.

CUPE workers are vital to the functioning of our schools. We are the people who keep our schools clean. We keep the lines of communication open between the schools and our parents. We work directly with our most vulnerable students, providing the nurturing environment necessary for a child’s development.

We have been working without a contract since last August. On Friday, July 17th the Ministry of Education and our Trustees Associations finally exchanged contract proposals with our union’s provincial negotiating committee. They are proposing another three years of zero wage increases on top of the zeroes we have had since 2012. Every proposal in the document involves a concession or a claw-back.

I am afraid for the physical and mental well-being of my members and our students. For the past few years education support staff have been struggling with excessive workloads. With the cuts to education funding for this September, many of our workers have lost their full-time employment. Our work environment has become unsafe in many circumstances. Unfortunately, our working conditions are also the students’ learning conditions.

Our schools cannot afford another cut to education support staff. With the implementation of a full-day kindergarten program and the dramatic increase in cases of behavioral issues, autism, ADHD, and learning disabilities, the level of student needs has increased dramatically. Too many of our students are unable to get the time and attention they need. The learning environment has become chaotic in many of our schools.

CUPE Education Support Workers work hard every school day in very difficult work environments with very little appreciation and respect. Our members have a passion for working closely with our young people and ensuring they have a welcoming, safe, and nurturing learning environment. They deserve the appreciation and respect of our province’s parents, school boards, and government!

Vicky Evans,
President, CUPE Local 4148

Posted by Paula Turner on July 24, 2015

I am cautiously optimistic to hear that the Ontario government met with leaders of the teacher’s unions today. Our teachers are hardworking, dedicated individuals who I have felt supported by and who have encouraged me to be included in the education teams on which I have worked. I want them to reach fair and equitable agreements with the Boards and government.

I am disheartened that the Ontario government has once again overlooked and disrespected other education workers within the province by excluding them from discussions. When a student needs individualized attention because of differences in their learning needs, or requires personal care or can only fully participate with their peers with the support of a teaching assistant, well, we are there. We stand beside the teachers – and sometimes in front because, well, teaching assistants are allowed to be hit by a special needs student – it’s part of our job. We are there, doing our job. When some confidence building activities or social skills need to be taught, we are there. When there are 26 three, four or five-year old students all wanting the same toy, DECEs are there alongside their teaching partner, passing along important lessons that will carry a child throughout their life. We are part of the teaching team.

Yet, the government has decided that the only parts of the teaching team that matter are the teachers. Teachers are incredibly valuable and should be treated more fairly, especially by the media and the government. Teachers though, unlike the government, would tell you that it does take a village to educate a child – it not only takes teachers and teaching assistants/DECEs, it takes custodians and secretaries and various specialists….and principals and vice principals….and parents too.

I am baffled and more than a little offended that the government has once again ignored and pushed aside other groups and made teachers the sole focus. In reality, I think it is not only unfair to those of us in other employee groups but also to the teachers because the target is once again squarely placed on their backs if things do not go well at the bargaining table. The government is (supposed to be) bargaining with ALL employee groups and all employee groups should be given the opportunity to bargain simultaneously and accept the outcomes, both good and bad.

We can take the criticism and we would be happy to do it alongside the teachers with whom we work each day. We are a team. Don’t pick apart the system, effectively pitting one group against another (whether it’s the public against teachers or teacher groups against all other groups) and expect it to work well once you, the government, decides it’s time to end this process.

All employee groups matter.

Most of all, our students matter. We all deserve better.

BY  NORA LORETO   | JULY 2, 2015

On June 30, Canada’s Senators voted on one final piece of legislation; so important that it didn’t matter that they might waste that precious extra second in the Red Chamber. They voted in favour of passing Bill C-377 into law.

The amendments contained in C-377 to the Income Tax Act are sweeping, broad and idiotic. If Canadians need any example that the Harper Conservatives care more about personal vendettas than good governance, the proof is wrapped up in C-377.

C-377 requires a ridiculous level of compliance from labour organizations and trusts. It forces unions, labour organizations, labour federations, organizations comprised of different unions, labour trusts and professional associations to publically report all expenditures of over $5000 and itemize exactly what that the money was dedicated to.

Everyone’s salaries, everyone’s timesheets and all contracts will be made public. This places an enormous burden on the bureaucratic structures of the labour movement.

Perhaps the most incredible part of Tuesday’s vote is the irony. The Senate is a house of patronage, financial mismanagement and corruption. With a spending scandal that has landed 30 senators in hot water, including nine under RCMP scrutiny (not including Duffy, Brazeau, Harb or Wallin), it’s high comedy that they think they can impose financial transparency on labour organizations.

If you read through the text of the legislation, it’s clear that this is an exercise in political harassment rather than an attempt at transparency. And, it was passed by people who either don’t understand or don’t care how burdensome it will be to implement; not just for labour organizations but also for the government.

Because of this, and because of the many challenges likely to be made based on the constitutionality of this legislation, C-377 doesn’t deserve to be treated as if it will be enforced. Labour organizations should not comply. Instead, C-377 should be seen as a measure of the massive attack being waged on our freedoms of assembly and association.

C-377 is meant to stop unions from engaging in political action despite the fact that unions only exist to engage in political action. Fighting for fair and decent working conditions is a political struggle. Prohibiting them from taking political action is to stop unions from doing what they exist to do.

The reality is that it’s much easier to involve oneself in the affairs of one’s union than to change the course of one’s government and the dispensation of one’s taxes. Union leadership present financial documents and members debate them. They aren’t the ones with a transparency problem.

It’s not as if the leadership of the CLC presented their budget in 500 pages with dozens of other significant amendments to non-budget policies and procedures. It’s not as if the budget was passed with the approval of just 136 people. That’s the kind of democracy that exists on Parliament Hill, not on a union’s convention floor.

Which is why C377 isn’t about transparency at all.

It’s easy to see why the Harper Conservatives hate unions. Unions are the final major roadblock in their campaign to fully transform Canada. Unions demand rights for working people, decent wages and benefits, all which constitute barriers towards full-scale and unregulated resource extraction and international trade deals.

Unionization and labour rights are fundamental within a free and democratic society. The ability of working people to gather, elect their own leadership and direct their own political campaigns is a tenet of democracy. It is the membership who has the right to make demands of the leadership; no one else.

And if there exists problems within the organization of the union, it is the membership who has the right and the responsibility to fight for change internally; no one else.

Which is why C-377 must be viewed through a broader lens. Regardless of what the extremists at LabourWatch or the CFIB say, C-377 is dangerous and is another example of how our fundamental right to assemble is evaporating.

Now that C-377 has received Royal Assent, unions will have to become compliant as of January 30 2016. Between now and then, there’s a federal election and the Tories might be booted from office. But they also might slither back into government.

How will Canada Revenue Agency ensure compliance to C-377? It’s not as if an accompanying bill was presented to boost the agency’s resources.

In fact, the Liberals allege that the Harper Conservatives have cut $314 million from CRA since 2012. This, plus the resources required to harass progressive charities means that there are fewer resources available to carry out the normal operations of CRA, let alone implement C-377.

And, Canada’s richest people continue to stash billions of dollars outside of Canada and away from the eyes of CRA. Rather than refocusing CRA’s efforts on recovering some of that money, the Harper Conservatives have instead cut the most senior CRA staff, the ones who would have the expertise to even go after this money at all.

Unions have always been enemy number one within fascist societies. C-377, combined with Canada’s increasing militarization, surveillance legislation, attacks on civil liberties, new citizenship rules, new prison sentences and attacks on Indigenous people and organizations, all add up to a frightening slide to the extreme right.

Clearly, C-377 isn’t about good governance at all. It’s an attack on unions that all Canadians should be concerned about. Not just because of the tremendous waste that it will cause, but because it’s another example of the true intentions of our current government.

For the Harper Conservatives, democracy is a meaningless buzzword and progressive organizations, including unions, need to be eliminated.

Posted by: Craig Huckerby in Business, Community July 16, 2015 17 Comments

Soaring electricity rates in Ontario are putting a lot of people and businesses in the poor house. The Sault Ste. Marie PUC tell Saultonline.com that an additional 276 late payment notices have been issued this year to customers and a total of 8,683 notices year to date. Giordan Zin, public relations for the PUC points out that in April 2015 the collection process was modified and collection letters are now sent out when a customer is 1 month past-due, rather than 2 months which had been the past practice.

Despite that however, many customers are finding it hard to cope with their ever increasing power bills and that includes business and industry in Ontario.

In a report last week, the Globe &Mail reported that one in 20 Ontario industries are planning on moving out of the province due to sky high electricity prices. 81 per cent of Ontarians are concerned that rising electricity rates will “impact the health of the Ontario economy.” In addition, the same percentage of Ontarians are concerned that the increases will “impact their disposable income, according to a Leger poll.

The Sault Ste. Marie PUC have no control over the rates charged, that falls squarely on the Ontario Energy Board and the Liberal Government. Locally the PUC retains only 18 cents out of every dollar collected from their customers says Zin, the bulk of your bill goes to other provincial agencies who absorb the remaining 82 cents. The PUC controls the distribution and a slight increase in the delivery charges were made in May.  For an average monthly bill of 800 kWh, overall charges increased 2.4% or $2.66, excluding any changes to the energy component. The part that PUC keeps to cover its costs to deliver the energy to the customer went down by $0.05 and the part that the Province collects to cover the provincial grid and regulatory charges went up by $2.66. Taxes on the overall increase amounted to $0.34 and the Ontario Clean Energy Benefit provided a rebate of $0.29.

The Sault Ste. Marie PUC says the average power bill for their customers are one of the lowest in the province and it wants to stay that way.

For many customers their power bills are hard to understand with a convoluted, complicated electricity pricing system but what is making Ontarians crazy is the over-abundance of electricity generated in Ontario is being sold cheaper to other jurisdictions. According to the report, energy demand in the province dropped 8 per cent between 2003 and 2014 – but generation capacity has increased by 13 per cent. This means that Ontario has a huge surplus and so it gives away electricity. These costs of producing electricity and then basically exporting it for free are passed on to customers.

Zin says, though they hear it first hand from customers, their anger should be directed to those who make the decisions on electrical rates. The PUC locally, as stated above only have 18 cents per dollar to keep their infrastructure going and making improvements and that’s exactly what they’re doing.

“PUC has been replacing poles, switches, insulators, and wires for many years in an effort to improve ongoing reliability. In particular, 3 years ago the PUC made a commitment to City Council to enact an aggressive and targeted infrastructure revitalization campaign aimed at replacing specific failure-prone switches and insulators.”  Zin said.

From 2012-2014 the PUC committed to replacing a total of 1,200 suspected defective switches and 3,000 failure-prone porcelain insulators.
Project Results
1,375 – Switches Replaced
3,302 – Porcelain Insulators Replaced

This targeted infrastructure renewal project resulted in an overall improvement in switch and insulator reliability. Since 2010/2011 there has been a:
76% Reduction in Frequency of Outages
75% Reduction in Duration of Outages

As good as that might sound, customers are fed up with the cost of power in Ontario. One customer, who did not want to be identified complains that her power bills are almost the same as her mortgage payment. “That isn’t right, when your utility bill is on par with your mortgage and car payments, it’s getting harder and harder to survive in this Province”

The Sault Ste. Marie Chamber of Commerce is equally concerned about power rates, yesterday it issued a release along-side the Ontario Chamber of Commerce painting a grave picture for the economy. “Summer is heating up and so is the price of electricity,” said Monica Dale, President of the Sault Ste. Marie Chamber of Commerce. “The price of electricity in Ontario is set to rise over the next two decades, adding to the cost of doing business in the province. If something is not done now to mitigate these increases, businesses will leave the province, jobs will be lost, and our economy will suffer.”

Dale adds that the issue of electricity rates is a vitally important issue to the Sault Ste. Marie economy and to many Chamber member businesses. She notes that “several of our key industries are from the manufacturing sector, where electricity accounts for a huge portion of the production process and as such, represents proportionately large production cost.