Playing Hardball

Teachers at every level in the Province of Ontario have never been poorly compensated. The strength of their bargaining power and their unions' dogged determination to fulfill their obligations to their members' well-being (if not to society's) has always ensured that teachers' salaries have been on the generous side as compared to those of other workers.

Of course, teachers can always claim to be professionals and some of them are, but hardly all.

It is a difficult job, no doubt about it, to regiment and engage children in learning. The poor teachers drum lessons into their students' heads, the outstanding ones manage to stimulate students to want to learn, to become self-starters, to search out the answers by motivating them with their own enthusiasm and skills in imparting knowledge and enthusing young people to acquire knowledge.

The sad thing is that there are too few of the former in the profession, not enough of the latter.

But it is salaries, and additional benefits like course preparation time, sick days, holidays, professional development days (when, in theory, teachers use the opportunity of a day off to attend teaching development courses), and the comfort of having an assured, steady job that is of the essence in Ontario at the moment.

Where the Ontario government, facing a monumental deficit, is attempting to follow the guidelines for cost-savings outlined by the report commissioned for that purpose.

Negotiations are underway with the province's largest elementary teachers' union, and while the government side remains prepared to sit at the negotiating table, the union representatives chose to walk out. The government's offer was an insult to hard-working teachers who expect that their benefits will continue to accrue, not to have to sit and entertain the government's wish-list of cutting back on those benefits.

As for salary increases, given the whopping raises they've enjoyed in the last few years, the Premier of Ontario proposed a wage freeze, in consideration of the fact that teachers are well compensated and have stable employment while something in the area of 8% of Ontarians are now unemployed.

And those that are employed are straining under the weight of taxes and increased provincial utilities costs.

He thought it reasonable under the circumstances, that the well-endowed professionals operating in the province like teachers and doctors would reasonably accept government proposals of moderate austerity measures. In gratitude, he felt - becoming one whose head is continually in the clouds - for having been so gifted by government negotiators in past contracts agreeable to union demands. More fool he.

How many workers are guaranteed 20 annual sick days and may accumulate them up to 200 in number up to retirement and then claim them at 50% of salary for a maximum award of $46,000? The government would ideally like to cut that number to six days a year in reflection of what other public service workers are entitled to.

Teachers in the province have benefited hugely over the past eight years under this proudly self-named "education" Premier. Teachers' salaries rose 34% over that time frame, giving the average teacher a lovely $83,500 annual salary. Teachers' unions in the province were so pleased with the Liberal government that they extended themselves hugely, spending what it took to convince their members to get out and vote in the last election, to keep the Liberals in power.

The unions now feel the government that they helped elect for its third term has betrayed them. "I felt we had an honest, open dialogue relationship. We assisted them in a major endeavour. And the first thing we got was clubbed over the head." (Peter Giuliani, president, Ottawa-Carleton Elementary Teachers Federation.)

In fact, the condition of this man's head is so oblivious of the greater society and teachers' place in it, in an economy that has been bruised and battered and still reeling, with rising unemployment, that a bit of a clubbing mightn't do him too great harm.