By Anthony Marco, OSSTF member
Here’s why I will be voting AGAINST the upcoming OSSTF proposal to use arbitration as a tactic to prompt more effective bargaining with Ford’s Conservatives.
I will be voting against the proposal even though I acknowledge that THIS TIME it could likely result in a better wage deal for OSSTF members. This will, of course, be the defense for the proposal: “our mandate is to bring home the best deal for our members.” At what cost?
1) I don’t believe it will get us a negotiated deal in two months considering the political benefits to the government of letting an arbitrator give away the government’s money instead of them showing weakness in bargaining.
2) This tactic is an affront to the labour movement and basically proposes a system where one union uses others’ successful job actions for their benefits without taking any of the risk.
The reality is that job action (or even the threat of it) is getting results: CUPE, UNIFOR, USW, PSAC.
The other reality is that OSSTF, like many public sector unions has allowed a generation of its membership to become disengaged to the point where most are willing to lose thousands of dollars a year versus inflation just so they don’t have to take job action. God forbid you ask this generation of teachers to do work to rule by withholding extra-curricular activities.
(Side note: when I worked in the local OSSTF office, we used to wonder how much a government would have to unilaterally cut from our salary before our members would wildcat strike. The sad reality is we thought it was probably about 10% and maybe more.)
Under this reality, the membership is not EVER ready to strike and is willing to accept any other alternative, even where it hurts a bargaining position. This proposal puts us one step away from being declared an essential service.
The balance of probabilities likely says that this tactic will result in a better deal THIS TIME for a membership who isn’t ready or willing to take job action. Any successes, however, will be on the backs of a dozen other unions across Ontario who have driven up wages through strike action and hard fought wins. In other words, the arbitrator will likely give us a better wage increase because other unions did the work for us.
If every union went down this road, the labour movement would shrivel and die.
This proposal is the logical conclusion, however, of the corporatization of unions: fiduciary responsibility. Profits override the tactics or the ethics behind them. This tactic is the tar sands of collective bargaining.
Striking is working for so many job sectors across the country right now. Putting the picket signs into cold storage may work once, but it kills our purpose as a union and group who claims to FIGHT for public education.
In just one round of bargaining, my union has gone from NO CUTS TO EDUCATION, to putting the fate of education in the hands of a single arbitrator.
Counterpoint: Whey members SHOULD vote in favour of the upcoming OSSTF proposal to use arbitration as a tactic to prompt more effective bargaining with Ford’s Conservatives (for the following reasons):
1) It will most likely work to get members a better deal. The evidence is clear: Unions who go to arbitration get better raises (and BTW
also enjoy better benefits). Look at this salary raise comparison between the Toronto District School Board Teachers and the Toronto
Police:
Year Police Teachers Inflation
2012 3% 0% 1.5%
2013 3% 0% 0.9%
2014 2% 0% 2%
2015 2.75% 0% 1.1%
2016 1.95% 1% 1.4%
2017 1.9% 2% 1.6%
2018 1.75% 1% 2.3%
2019 2.5% 1.5% 1.9%
2020 2.5% 1% 0.7%
2021 1.97% 1% 3.4%
2022 1.85% 1% 6.8%
I challenge anyone to point to the “other unions’ successful job actions” that lead to year after year of inflation killing raises illustrated
above for the Toronto Police.
2) For public sector workers, true collective bargaining does not exist. It never has. “Arbitration vs. collective bargaining” is a false
dichotomy. That is because for free and fair collective bargaining to take place, you would need management and workers to be fighting on
a level playing field with an equal balance of power. In the case of public sector workers, this is very clearly not the case.
Striking may be effective in a private sector scenario where a protracted strike will inflict equal damage on both sides (poverty for the
workers and financial damage to the company). But in the case of public sector job actions, it is only the workers who really suffer.
Management (the government) presents their offer (publicly), which is immediately denounced as inadequate by the workers’
representatives (the union). The government then gauges public opinion on the matter, which is the only thing
they care about. Since most people do not support significant raises for teachers, the government refuses to budge, or even passes wage
suppressing legislation, all of which is broadly supported by the public. The teachers are then left with the option to strike- or are they?
Not really. The government holds the trump card- back to work legislation. After a few weeks when the public tires of the strike, teachers
can simply be ordered back to work with the same shitty deal they were offered in the first place.
Teachers are disengaged from their union because they can see that striking is pointless. It only pisses off the public and kills whatever
little sympathy they may have been enjoying (from a small minority).
It is said that stupidity is trying the same failing strategy over and over and expecting a different result. I have been a secondary teacher
since 1993 and over that time our salaries, benefits, and working conditions have slowly but surely eroded. Meanwhile emergency services
workers, who enjoy binding arbitration, have had the opposite result. It’s time to admit that we need a new approach.
Here’s the thing: We teachers have the worst of both worlds. On the one hand, we don’t have arbitration, and on the other, our right to strike is so severely limited that it is really a farce. All we can do is appeal to the public and beg them to tell the government to give us a raise. Can you imagine if the cops had to rely on that?
We are, in reality, an essential service. If we weren’t, then governments would not be able to legislate us back to work. Since we do not have a true and unlimited right to strike, then we have no choice but to opt for some form of third-party arbitration.
It can’t be worse than what we have gotten over the last few decades.
The public sector unions that are deemed essential and do not have the right to strike are always given larger raises by an arbitrator. The arbitrator considers this when giving the award because their right to strike has been legislated away form them. As well, the police unions in Canada are not very large, but they are very powerful in a political sense and that is why the government does not appeal their arbitrated wage settlements. Being a police officer can be an extremely challenging, dangerous occupation and to appeal the generous wage settlements would be a foolish politcial move by the government. If the teachers’ unions forfeit thier right to strike, that would not be taken into consideration by an arbitrator as they would an essential worker who never had the right to strike.
Down with the Liberals!!