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The Premier says she’s still optimistic, one day after talks broke off with elementary teachers.
Late yesterday the education minister released a statement saying that the province and the school boards had tabled a proposal similar to deals reached with other teachers’ unions. Then they left the table.
The trouble has been going on since last spring. We are now one week into the new school year, and elementary teachers are still working to rule. For example, they’re refusing some administrative duties, and did not hand out report cards at the end of last school year. Today the premier took a question about the breakdown in talks after 7 intensive days of bargaining.
“I hope that as Mr. Hammond and his exec meet on Monday they’ll look at that deal and they’ll see it’s similar to what was accepted by the other teacher groups and really, the onus is on them, on Mr. Hammond, to explain why that deal is good enough for the secondary school teachers in the province but not good enough for the elementary teachers. So I hope that we will see soon that there will be an agreement with the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario . I’m still optimistic.”
Shortly after those talks broke off we spoke by phone with the head of the elementary teachers union, Sam Hammond. He said he was shocked that the province walked away and that a deal for high school teachers is not a deal for elementary teachers.
“What is important to us as a union, important to our members in elementary from full day kindergarten right through to grade 8, are specific to our members and in many ways are different from issues that OSSTF or any other union dealt with. We were here to bargain on behalf of our members and that hasn’t gone in the direction we were hoping it would. That we would be able to reach a fair and respectful deal on behalf of our members and students in this province.”
Hammond said he thought the parties had been making slow progress and he had been expecting to set more dates for more negotiation.
The union says it’s planning to meet on Monday with its local union presidents to decide next steps, but no one would talk to us today about what could happen next week, or if the next phase of job action will include teachers on picket lines and parents looking for childcare.
