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ONTARIO TEACHERS WON'T DO HARRIS TORIES' BIDDING
(This article is from the Sept. 1-15/2000 issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $25/year, or $12 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $25 US per year; other overseas readers - $25 US or $35 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, Canada, V5L 3J1.)
"Labour In Action" Column by Liz Rowley
SECONDARY SCHOOL TEACHERS in Ontario are putting their strike mandate on the shelf for now. They will do "an uncommonly good job" in the classroom for all their students, including the 20 to 40 new ones each will get this fall, said Ontario Secondary School Teachers Federation President Earl Manners, speaking on Aug. 25 to 200 district presidents and local leadership in Toronto.
The 50,000-member OSSTF, together with the 100,000 members of the Ontario English Catholic Teachers' Association, teachers in the French Boards, and CUPE support staff, were all in a strike position as collective agreements in the education sector expired province-wide on Aug. 31.
OSSTF has already seen the Harris government rip up agreements negotiated just last spring. Bill 74, the grotesquely-named Education Accountability Act, has redefined the length of the workday, and even the work itself. Teaching time has been arbitrarily extended from 6 to 6.7 classes. In a classroom version of speed-up, fewer teachers must take on the jobs those who have retired or been laid off. The number of secondary teachers per 1,000 students has been reduced from 65 to 57, or about 7 to 8 teachers per school.
And it gets worse. The addition of new duties, called "co-instructional" activities in the legislation, will mean even more staff cuts if implemented. Other budget cuts, including steep reductions in special education funding, add to the loss of teachers, programs and services.
Bill 74 also guts the powers and accountability of locally-elected School Boards, leaving trustees with two options: comply with Ministry-ordered cuts, closures and layoffs, or face removal from office, fines, and being banned from holding public office.
Teachers say their fight is with the province, not the Boards. It's the Tory agenda to dismantle public education - and to introduce two-tier private education - that they want the public to understand and resist.
"We will be returning to work in September, but we will not make Bill 74 work," said Manners at the Aug. 25 meeting. "We will not make fewer teachers and new cutbacks work. There are consequences to this government's actions. They are real, they hurt, and teachers and educational workers have no intention of accepting responsibility for the government's actions.
"If the Minister wants sports, music, and theatrical productions, then she will have to fund them. There will be no more bake sales, no more car washes. If the Minister wants students to travel to field trips, then she will have to fund the transportation. Teachers will no longer place themselves in a position of liability by transporting students in their private cars."
Manners said the government is working to transform public schools into factories, as part of the move to charter schools and voucher education. Teachers will work to the letter of the law, he said, guaranteeing that students will get the very best during the four hours and ten minutes per day of legislated teaching time.
<Headline 18 helv>The big lie: "teachers hardly work"
<Body text> Responding to the claim that teachers have an easy job, Manners said "It's the big lie. This government has tried to suggest that teachers only work four hours and ten minutes a day. So we are going to teach four hours and ten minutes a day. We are going to do the other things to make sure we do a good job. In the classroom.
"But if this government wants to treat schools as factories, we are going to negotiate model factory collective agreements for our teachers, to protect the teaching and learning conditions of our classrooms. If they're going to introduce time and motion studies, our collective agreements are going to be talking an awful lot about time and motion.... We will not let a strike deflect from the consequences of Bill 74. We are going to let the government's actions see the light of day."
"This is not work-to-rule," Manners said. "We are putting our strike mandate on the shelf, for now. But our members are fed up. If they are to do the job well in the classroom, they cannot do many of the other things this government expects. So they are going to focus on the classroom."
Asked what the union will do when the Tories use the powers in Bill 74 to force teachers to pick up extra-curricular activities, Manners said, "We'll cross that bridge when we come to it. We have a strike mandate. But it won't be our actions that precipitate job action. If parents and the public are aware of that, then I think pressure will be brought to bear on the government, not us."
<Headline 18 helv>Tories "really Ontario CRAP"
<Body text> Moving to the political agenda, Manners said that for the past five years "teachers and educational workers have been demonized and starved to make the public education system ripe for a private takeover. Mike Harris supports two-tiered health care. Mike Harris sets policies that separate the haves from the have-nots. Mike Harris is ready to back a two-tiered education system in Ontario."
Warning that the Ontario Tories are signed-up members of the Canadian Alliance ("they are really Ontario CRAP"), Manners said this fall's municipal and school board elections, and the coming federal election, will be important battlegrounds.
"Either we will have municipal councils and school boards that speak out to protect public services and resist further downloading and cuts, or we will have municipal governments and school boards that simply deliver and implement the Mike Harris CRAP agenda."
Promising to seek out and support progressive candidates, Manners said "people are not putting forward their names, because they don't wish to be servants of the provincial government... But it's very important for this organization to make sure that people dedicated to public education are running, or our School Boards will simply become satellites of the Ministry and of this government."
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