Ontarians irritated by McGuinty’s handling of teacher’s dispute … but more annoyed at ‘pampered’ teachers: poll

Tristin Hopper | Jan 11, 2013 5:30 PM ET | Last Updated: Jan 12, 2013 2:06 PM ET
More from Tristin Hopper | @TristinHopper

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Frank Gunn Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty speaks to reporters in Toronto on Friday January 11, 2013

National Post Graphics

 

Ontarians are peeved with Premier Dalton McGuinty’s handling of a contract dispute with the province’s teachers — but not as peeved as they are with the demands of the “pampered” teachers themselves, according to a recent Ipsos Reid poll jointly-commissioned by Postmedia.

Survey repondents “believe that the teachers arewell-compensated — some would say pampered — that their working conditions are just fine,” said Ipsos Reid spokesman John Wright.
“Because of that, they think extracurricular activities should be built into [the teachers’] current contract,” he added.

Since early December, Ontario’s 60,000 high school teachers have been barred by their union, the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation, from participating in extra curricular and sport activities.

At issue, say the union presenting elementary and highschool teachers, is the right of teachers to hash out labour agreements with their respective school districts — rather than be subject to a province-wide contract.

On January 3, in one of the government’s first acts of the New Year, Education Minister Laurel Broten imposed a two-year contract on Ontario teachers that introduced wage freezes and reduced sick days.

In response, on Friday the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario has been planning a one day walkout. Although, after a 4 a.m. ruling by the Ontario Labour Relations Board that it constituted an “illegal strike,” the union called off the action — prompting a mad scramble to get out the word that school was back in session.

Ultimately, eight Ontario school boards were not able to get doors unlocked and school buses fired up in time.

At a Friday press conference, Mr. McGuinty thanked parents for being patient through a “roller coaster ride.”

Even as they coped with the consequences of labour action, Ipsos Reid found that most Ontarians did not know what the fuss was about.

Only 43% of Ontarians could correctly pinpoint the source of the unions’ complaints while 40% of respondents falsely believed the fight was over compensation and sick days and another 20% admitted they “don’t know.”

“The union has not been able to articulate what they’re fighting about,” said Mr. Wright.

“There’s been radio commercials and talk about ‘teaching our children about democracy,’ but what it’s really about is the collective bargaining system,” he added.

Why parents had to wait until 4 a.m. to find out whether elementary schools were in session Friday:
On Wednesday, the union representing public elementary teachers announced plans for a “one-day political protest” against Bill 115, legislation the government used this month to impose contracts on school boards that remained at a bargaining impasse.

The Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario (ETFO) argued the protest was protected under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but the government held that any walkout would be illegal, because teachers moved out of a legal strike position when the province imposed contracts. After a 13-hour hearing, the Ontario Labour Relations Board (OLRB) ultimately sided with the government, ruling around 4 a.m. Friday that the proposed action amounted to an unlawful strike.

So why did it drag on so late? There were a number of reasons, says OLRB solicitor Voy Stelmaszynski. For one, the board allowed the parties to present their entire case rather than setting a timeline. “We let them argue as fully as they thought they needed to [because] it was a case of first instance,” Mr. Stelmaszynski said. “It’s a new piece of legislation and it hadn’t been litigated before, so we thought to make a proper decision, we should hear as much as we can for as long as we need to.”

In addition, the timing of ETFO’s announcement left little room for movement. The government filed its application at 11 p.m. Wednesday upon learning of ETFO’s plans. It was processed first thing Thursday morning, and ETFO was given until 1 p.m. to respond. The hearing itself started two hours later.

As a result, teachers, parents and students were thrust into uncertainty until the last minute, with some schools advising parents to check online in the morning to find out whether classes were in session. But while the ruling bars them from staging a walkout during school hours, University of Toronto labour relations professor Laurel MacDowell noted that teachers can still make their voices heard: “If they want to protest out of hours, on a Saturday or something, they can do that.”
— Megan O’Toole, National Post

 Then again, a bit of confusion might be playing to the union’s advantage: When asked directly about collective bargaining, a whopping 75% or respondents sided with the government’s position.

Still, when it came to public image, an embarrassingly small minority of people (23%) declared that the McGuinty government was being “fair and reasonable.”

The unions fared no better. As for who was acting “responsibly” or “in the best interest of students,” both parties were tied at 24% and 21% support, respectively.

A mere one third of respondents said teachers were hard done by and “deserve better” while 68% agreed that “teachers have jobs, conditions, and pay that make them pampered compared to most workers in Ontario.”

“If they had wanted to, [the Liberal government] could have fought a full campaign on this issue and probably won,” said Mr. Wright.

Nevertheless, he attributed Mr. McGuinty’s apparent shyness to the upcoming Liberal leadership election scheduled for the end of January.

“The government has won the intellectual argument, and in any other situation it would allow them to hammer the opposition, but they’ve pulled their punches,” he said.

The 809 Ontarians interviewed for the survey were particularly strong in their support for extra-curricular activities. Giventeachers’ current “compensation and benefits package,” 69% of respondents said that extra-curriculars should be made a regular part of the school day.

Even if teachers still refused to coach football or run the debate team, 79% of respondents advocated that carefully-screened “volunteer parents” be allowed to enter the schools to take their place.
Last Friday Mr. McGuinty said he had no intention of imposing extra-curricular requirements on the province’s teachers.

“Extracurriculars are a voluntary service provided by teachers out of a sense of both goodwill … and I just don’t believe that you can legislate goodwill,” he said.

The poll, conducted between January 7th and 10th, is accurate to within +/- 3.9 percentage points had all Ontarians adults been polled.

National Post
thopper@nationalpost.com