Teachers' pay should vary

Enlarge Image

09 February 2010 edit dinky B Dale Cummings Winnipeg Free Press EDUCATION FUNDING

Enlarge Image

September 13 2011 edit dinky DALE CUMMINGS / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS / SCHOOL TEACHERS BLACKBOARD

Seven Oaks school division teachers are fed up with being the lowest-paid in Winnipeg and for the sake of a few hundred dollars more each year, they are fighting the point at arbitration. The school board says raising pay to the levels sought, retroactively, would trigger at least a four per cent hike to salaries, when other Winnipeg divisions have awarded increases in the 1.5 to two per cent range.

Arbitrators often come down the middle of the positions they face. That's the risk of binding arbitration -- both sides lose control over the outcome when negotiations break down and neither party can test the other's resolve via strike or lockout. It is also why the provincial government's warning to the publicly paid labour force in 2010 to take zero per cent increases for two years or face layoffs had no real power over teachers' unions, whose local units bargain with school trustees.

Seven Oaks teachers should not get extraordinary wage increases simply because they are at the bottom of the Winnipeg scale. Someone has to be last or salaries across the city would have to be levelled. The justification for having local school board budgets is to reflect an area's specific needs and its ability to pay. The ability to raise revenue from the local tax base is balanced to an extent by a provincial grant formula, but it also turns on the appetite for tax increases of local property owners. Putting resolution in the hands of an arbitration panel effectively eliminates the influence of voters, who elect trustees to set a division's budget.

As trustees are quick to point out, the difference in staff wages across Winnipeg goes hand in hand with varying levels of benefits. The inequalities between divisions are the result of historical bargaining patterns, and the fact that a local unit will prioritize improvements in one over the other in any given negotiation period, while typically trying to fall in line with percentage increases awarded to other local bargaining units.

There is a $1,127 disparity between a Class 5 teacher at the top of the wage scale in Louis Riel -- the highest in Winnipeg -- and the same class of teacher in Seven Oaks. The Manitoba Teachers' Society believes the board is parsimonious when its teachers are juggling the pressures of an above-average increase in enrolment. But a more forceful argument could be made that the board would do better to improve working conditions -- the hiring of more staff -- which is what it has done. That benefits teachers and students.

MTS is lobbying the provincial government for provincewide bargaining, arguing it alone has the ability to ensure equitable treatment of schools across division boundaries. The school trustees' association is opposed to provincewide bargaining because it recognizes it undermines a primary purpose of local school boards. Others warn, justifiably, that moving to one bargaining unit would inevitably see staff raised to the highest wage and benefits levels now paid.

The fact that teachers in Winnipeg are pretty much at par at a certain level of classification suggests there is no great wage disparity in the city. The differences, however, become more marked as comparisons are made to regional boards. In the north, the public school boards pay richer salaries to offset higher costs of living and also to attract quality teachers.

The NDP administration has made noises in the recent past about the logic of provincewide bargaining, a potentially worrisome signal given the fact a handful of school board amalgamations saw salaries levelled up.

It makes sense for the provincial government to assume full control of education funding and become chief negotiator with bargaining units. But the gap in wages in Winnipeg should level out only over the long term, as each unit sets its priorities. But that doesn't hold for divisions in very different regions of the province, where local issues are evidently different and, hence, so are wages and benefits.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition June 11, 2012 A10