Education Minister Liz Sandals is defending the government's decision to cover negotiating costs for school boards and unions, which were run up because of the province's new collective bargaining system.
The Globe and Mail <a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/ontario-paid-1-million-to-union-for-labour-peace-with-high-school-teachers/article26900173/" target="_blank">reported Wednesday</a> morning that the Liberal government had agreed to pay the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation $1-million, purportedly “to offset the cost of central collective bargaining.” The payment was part of the government’s new contract with the high-school teachers union, which was struck in August.
Ontario English Catholic Teachers’ Association President Ann Hawkins told QP Briefing that her union and the province had also agreed to a million-dollar payment.
Sandals said after question period the province was “supporting the extraordinary costs” for school boards, and at least one union, presumably, related to the new collective bargaining process. That process has certain issues, such as salaries, negotiated at a central table. Other matters are worked out at local tables between the school boards and the unions (although Sandals said the province doesn’t cover local costs).
Sandals said the new process caused delays, one of which was sorting out central and local bargaining issues. Then came the costs, including renting the space needed to hold the negotiations.
“This has been an unusually dragged out process, because it’s the first time we’ve done it,”  Sandals said. “This is the really big transformation, which is into actual two-tier legislative collective bargaining, and we are supporting the extraordinary costs related to that new process being implemented."
Sandals wouldn’t comment on whether other teacher unions had their bargaining costs covered. She also didn’t have the figures on hand for the school boards.
“This will never happen again,” though, Sandals said. “This is the end of the transformation as we’re getting collective agreements.”
The two-tier negotiating system was brought in after the last round of collective bargaining in 2012, which saw the McGuinty government impose a contract and pay freeze on teachers. Sandals said the government had previously supported the negotiating costs of both the school boards and unions when they used to bargain a provincial framework.
Under the new bargaining system, the province has struck deals with every teacher union except for the Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario. The province and ETFO are currently not negotiating. In a release, the union said it had "neither requested nor accepted government funds, and will pay for all its own expenses associated with bargaining at the central table and in local bargaining."
Progressive Conservative Leader Patrick Brown pointed out that the new two-tier system was the government’s “invention.”
“It was their solution to have faster negotiations. It was an utter failure,” Brown told reporters.
NDP Leader Andrea Horwath said the payment was “a hangover” from Bill 115, which the McGuinty government used to freeze teachers' salaries.
“That’s what this money is now being utilized to pay for, for the government’s own mistakes,” said Horwath.
The Globe also reported that the government paid for its 1.5-per-cent raise and 1-per-cent lump sum for the high-school teachers “by diverting money from a fund for special programs that help struggling students graduate.”
Sandals said the province had brought in a multiyear program in 2008 that hired additional teachers. The last year of the program was deferred, she says, and then cancelled in this round of bargaining because graduation rates had improved and it was no longer needed. “We’re continuing to pay for those extra teachers that we hired. They’re still there,” she said.
Sandals also brought up concessions the province had wrung out of the teachers, such as reducing the use of sick leave.
Horwath, however, called the decision “quite shocking.”
“This really calls into question this government’s commitment to helping students who are having a difficult time in their high-school studies.”
To contact the reporter on this story: 
gzochodne@qpbriefing.com

New bargaining system for teachers created ‘extraordinary’ costs: Sandals

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