President's Memo

May 20, 2005

Negotiations

Given that we have been receiving a few calls recently concerning where we stand in terms of negotiations, I thought that a President’s Memo to the membership would be in order.

The three bargaining units –Teachers, Occasional Teachers and Continuing Education Instructors–which started the school year without a contract are still without a contract at this time.

As you will recall, all OSSTF bargaining units that were without a contract were placed into Provincial Responsibility for Negotiations (PRN) as of January 21, 2005. This, of course, included the three District 11 bargaining units listed above.

The Continuing Education Instructors’ negotiations team has been meeting with the board since last September, and while agreement has been reached on a number of non-monetary issues, an impasse has now been reached with regard to issues around compensation. The bargaining unit executive is considering ways to deal with this. No new dates are scheduled at this time.

The Teachers’ Bargaining Unit, including the Continuing Education Teachers, has also been without a contract since August 31, 2004. The negotiations team has been meeting with the board quite regularly since October 15. The Occasional Teachers’ Bargaining Unit contract is also being negotiated in conjunction with the TBU contract.

The TBU took a strike vote on March 2. Having met with a Conciliator on April 13, we have been in legal strike position since May 4. However, because negotiations continue to progress productively, there are no plans at this time to move into any kind of sanctions.

In the meantime, a provincial policy framework has been developed by staff from the Ministry of Education, the OSSTF and the Ontario Public School Boards Association and it outlines the funding and regulatory changes that now make local negotiations on the issues of compensation and workload possible.

Indeed, to date, seven OSSTF TBU agreements have been reached–York Region, Limestone, Rainbow, Peel, Simcoe County, Hastings-Prince Edward, and Rainy River. All of these are four year contracts, ending on August 31, 2008, and all have improved workload, class size and compensation provisions.

Here, we still have four TBU bargaining dates scheduled: Friday May 27, Monday May 30, Tuesday May 31 and Wednesday June 1. We hope that we will have good news to share with the TBU, CET and OT members sometime soon.

Once we do have a tentative agreement, we will alert you by phone chain so that you will know before it hits the media. A General Members’ Meeting will be called to share the specifics of the tentative agreement, and then the contract vote will be held in branches the next day. Stay tuned!!

Our fourth bargaining unit, the Professional Student Services Personnel, has a contract which doesn’t expire until August 31, 2005. At present, the PSSP Collective Bargaining Committee is working on developing its negotiations brief and will give notice to the board in June that they wish to begin negotiations.

District 11 Annual General Meetings

May 24: Professional Student Services Personnel (4:30 pm at the Lamplighter Inn)

May 26: District 11 (4:30 pm at Clarke Road SS)

May 26: Teachers (5:30 pm at Clarke Road SS)

May 30: Continuing Education Instructors (4:00 pm at Wheable)

June 9: Occasional Teachers (4:00 pm at the District Office)
 

June 15: District 11 Annual Retirement Dinner (Four Points Sheraton)

Click here for previous issues of President's Memos

Let us not take thought for our separate interests, but let us help one another.
(OSSTF Motto)

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