Only a few days after a tentative agreement between members of the Nova Scotia Teachers Union (NSTU) and the provincial government was reached, many public school teachers are now expressing concern and frustration over the deal.
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The agreement was reached late last week and many teachers, like Paul Wozney, learned details of the tentative deal during a phone conference with the NSTU on Tuesday evening.
The new deal is expected to cost the province an extra $60 million. Wozney said although there are some “minor gains” in the contract, for the most part it’s exactly the same as two previously rejected contracts.
“If we take this deal as teachers, after having been very loud for a long time that what we’re doing work-to-rule for is for better classrooms, better supports, so that we all are not drowning and we accept a deal where there is really nothing at all to address those conditions but we get two extra days paid off, it’s really really hard for the union to claim that it represents the interest of public education,” Wozney said.
“Really, we’re going to be back here in two years.”
No classroom caps, no long service award, but two paid days off
The tentative agreement does not address the long-service award for teachers who were hired after the last contract expired. It also offers no change in classroom size caps, two things that the union had been fighting for.
The deal does, however, change the way wages would increase for teachers by shortening the wage freeze by four months.
Wozney said he has two main concerns with the tentative agreement. The first is the length and financial terms of the deal, which he says are pretty much dictated by the Public Services Sustainability Act.
“It went from three per cent to 3.02 per cent compounded over four years. I don’t think that’s different and really, obviously financially, there’s been no willingness to negotiate on salary and long-service award,” Wozney said.
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The high school teacher said he is also concerned with how the government is trying to “appease the loss of the service award” with two paid days off a year. Something Wozney said wasn’t very high on the priority list for teachers.
He believes if teachers accept the deal, it will look like they didn’t do what they said they were going to – stand up for better classrooms.
“We look like we sold out for two days,” Wozney told Global News.
“The public is going to fixate on those two days as the selling point of the deal, so two days off a year is one per cent of your teaching time.”
Wozney believes if teachers reject this agreement, some “grave decisions” will have to be made.
“We’re in a place where having taken our foot off the work-to-rule gas pedal, how do you put it back on?” he said. “All the sports that are supposed to start in two weeks, all the trips that have kind of come back, how do you cut that stuff again?”
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“There’s tens of thousands of parents that lined up to support teachers, thousands of students. I mean, I can’t count the number of emails and letters that have been written to advocate for better education and if we take this deal, it’s kind of like we looked after number one and we could care less about those things.”
Wozney said although stopping work-to-rule once a tentative agreement was reached is protocol, nothing about this negotiation has been standard.
“On one hand, the agreement tells me that the government was intractable,” he said.
“All their talk about listening to teachers, that all their talk about we’re negotiating in good faith, really all they’ve done, they’ve never budged off Bill 148. They legislated the terms and they haven’t moved and they’re not going to move. How much freedom our negotiating team had to arrive at a different conclusion, it doesn’t sounds like it was ever going to be possible.”
‘Calls to resign’
Many teachers have been posting their shock over the tentative agreement online. If teachers vote no on this contract, it will be the third tentative agreement they will have rejected since their contract expired in July of 2015.
“Personally, I won’t speak for other teachers but there’s a sense of disconnect that the people that I elected did not represent my interests and the interests of people in my local,” Wozney said.
“Already there’s calls for people to resign over this. If it’s rejected again, a lot of people have criticized the union for bringing two deals that have been rejected already. A third one, anybody who knows their Canadian labour knows typically after one agreement that doesn’t meet with the approval of the membership, usually you fall on your sword and you make room for people to find another way and that hasn’t happened yet.”
NSTU president Liette Doucet was not available for an interview Wednesday. A spokesperson for the union said they were not releasing any details about the agreement until their members had a chance to vote on it, however Doucet said on Friday the union executive was recommending its members accept the deal.
Concerns raised over inclusive education and working conditions panel
A commission to review inclusive education is also part of the new offer by the provincial government. But Wozney said he has concerns with who will be represented during the review process.
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“If it doesn’t include parents and students, for who inclusion is their normal, what kind of value can that panel have?” he said.
Wozney is also raising concerns about another part of the contract: a panel on working conditions.
The tentative agreement outlines that the government will spend $20 million over two years to help address challenges that teachers face but it’s a panel that Wozney said won’t involve the people who are affected most.
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“The panel wasn’t going to have any quote on quote real teachers on it. It was all going to be union representation, so no classroom teachers are going to sit on that.”
‘Dark cloud of Bill 148’
NS NDP Leader Gary Burrill said the ongoing labour dispute can be traced back to the government.
“We know we would not be in this very difficult moment with the really whole education system thrown into crisis and chaos, we would not be here if the premier and the minister of education had not spent every opportunity for the last three, four months degenerating the teaching profession and insulting teachers and if they had not come into these negotiations in the first place placing them all under this unproductive, dark cloud of Bill 148,” he said.
If proclaimed, Bill 148 would freeze wages for public sector works across the province and freeze the long-service award for current employees.
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NS government hopes teachers will ‘see the benefits’
“This is the third deal. A lot of work has gone into reaching this point,” said Education Minister Karen Casey in a written statement to Global News.
“We hope that the teachers will see the benefits. We believe the deal addresses working conditions for teachers and benefits students in the classroom. On wages, we stayed within our fiscal plan, which we believe is fair to teachers and affordable for Nova Scotians. Out of respect for the union who is in the midst of briefing its members before the vote, we are not in a position to discuss the details of the tentative agreement at this time.”
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All 9,300 public school teachers in the province will vote on the tentative agreement on Feb. 8.
Summary of contract negotiations:
Highlights of the new tentative agreement:
Key changes from the 2016 tentative agreement:
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