The Ontario English Catholic Teachers Association (OECTA) announced the ratification of its tentative agreement with the province and the Ontario Catholic School Trustees’ Association on Sept. 18.
Local union leaders will now work with individual school boards to reach a local agreement.
OECTA represents 50,000 elementary and secondary school teachers in Ontario.
“(The) provincial plan has most of what would be considered the big-dollar initiatives from the board and the ministry,” explained Wellington OECTA president Mark Berardine.
“Salary and any changes that would come down on class size or anything like that.”
One of the areas Berardine cited as a continuing concern is class size.
“I know a lot of people are looking at the full-day kindergarten classes that are at an unbelievably high enrollment of 30, and sometimes more as the year goes on,” he told the Advertiser.
“None of those will be changed, which is a disappointing aspect to having to sign the agreement.”
Berardine also highlighted salary as a disappointing aspect of the contract, saying teachers are going to be “behind the cost of living substantially,” at the end of the new three-year contract in 2017.
He said even though there will be a small lump sum given to teachers this year and another small increase next year, the previous contract’s restrictions, mean the “real dollars” awarded to teachers under the new contract aren’t that significant.
“All teachers had their wages frozen now for three years and the people that were starting out their career with the most vulnerable debt out of teachers’ college and waiting to find a chance to find a job, they had their experience and their education withheld each of the three years for half a year,” Berardine said.
“So in addition to being frozen, they were actually not being given what the grid of experience and their qualifications would normally have paid them every September the first.”
Yet, the teachers voted to ratify the agreement.
“The teachers, they want to be in their classrooms, they want to work, they want to do all the extracurriculars that we always do for the kids, and the love of teaching that we hold and they were willing to once again put the schools over salaries,” Berardine said.
In an email statement education minister Liz Sandals said, “The tentative agreement with OECTA is the first to be ratified under the new School Boards Collective Bargaining Act, and clearly demonstrates that the legislation is working.
“It also proves that constructive negotiations are always possible when partners are willing to work together towards a common goal: ensuring student achievement and well-being.”
The next step in the collective agreement for Wellington Catholic teachers is to come to an agreement with the Wellington Catholic District School board.
Berardine said the local negotiations have limited goals. There is no money involved and it’s more about day-to-day operational understandings and the procedure of how things are conducted between the board and the union.
“We haven’t even been given dates from them… so we’re waiting, but in the meantime, everything (is) as it has been since September first; there is no work-to-rule action taking place anywhere in Wellington Catholic,” Berardine said.
