Right to strike would change education equation

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 10/06/2021 (1594 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

IF the provincial government wants to sharpen the focus on its changes to education, it should return to teachers the right to strike.

While that suggestion sends chills down the spines of politicians, parents and teachers, it would bring a jolt of reality to the current debate on changes to the education system.

Public school teachers gave up the right to strike in 1956. In exchange, the government agreed disputes would be settled by independent arbitration panels. The system has benefited both sides. Teachers are paid fairly for the work they do, and no schools have lost a single day of instruction because of a strike.

On the other hand, strikes and near-strikes are often settled through increases in non-salary benefits, something teachers have not enjoyed.

Unlike most other unionized and many non-unionized workers, they fund their own employee assistance and disability programs, they don’t get paid overtime and are not compensated (except minimally, in some cases) for extracurricular work. For more than 100 years, two months’ vacation in the summer has been the unstated compensation.

A handful of government administrations have not liked the arbitration system, because they haven’t been able to dictate how and how much teachers are compensated.

The current government is Exhibit A.

In its bundle of education “modernization” plans is a backdoor attack on the arbitration system. In two separate bills, it mandates that arbitration panels must take into account the government’s “ability to pay” when determining settlements. In other words, it wants independent arbitrators to settle on what the government is willing to pay, not what is fair. It doesn’t like the fact union staff build such persuasive arguments in front of arbitration panels. It wants to put its thumb on the scale.

It’s not a new tactic. It has been tried before, without success because some arbitration panels ignored government wishes. Now, however, the government will soon be directly involved in teacher negotiations, as they will be handled provincially rather than division by division.

It’s a point at which morality and politics diverge. If it wants to destroy a 65-year-old agreement, fine — up the stakes by letting teachers withhold their services. Anyone who has faced a strike vote or gone on strike knows the process brings a whole new perspective to issues.

That goes for the other side, too.

The teachers’ union, The Manitoba Teachers’ Society, has been in high dudgeon over changes the province plans to make in education, including its chipping away of the independent arbitration system. The union seems to be now opposed to everything the government is doing, using the threadbare argument to “keep politics out of the classroom.”

Spoiler alert: we elect governments to make changes, whether we like them or not. It’s their job.

Opposition forces can continue raving, because there are no real consequences.

The government will ignore the union, more so now that it has joined the Manitoba Federation of Labour, generally thought of as the provisional arm of the NDP. It has removed the fig leaf of “non-partisanship” it has so often claimed. Keep politics in the classroom!

At the beginning of the pandemic, the union had a tenuous working relationship with the government on COVID-19 safety and operations of schools, but the MFL alliance was likely the final kiss goodbye on both sides.

So be it. But how much different might have been the latest arguments, had the prospect of a teachers’ strike perhaps moderated the discussion. Maybe both sides would think about the possible, eventual consequences of their actions.

The government might consider that both its underhanded and obvious intentions might anger a lot of teachers who care both about education and their compensation. The union might be less inclined to try to rile up members on every issue, big and small, if it ended with members rejecting any settlement with the government.

The union sometimes talks of “going nuclear” over government policy, apparently forgetting it disarmed in 1956. If members had the right to withhold services, it would hopefully give leadership pause to focus on what’s important to those members. It’s easy to yell and scream; it’s not so easy to walk a picket line.

Of course, no government, of any stripe, will ever return the right to strike to teachers. Nobody wants to bring back lawn darts, either.

And now, both sides should get a grip.

Even without that cliff edge in front of it, the government should not tamper with the détente that has existed in bargaining for decades. If that’s a problem, let them strike. And the union could focus its opposition on issues that matter. Currently, it is opposed to the whole of Bill 64, the education modernization legislation, presumably even those parts that promise action on recommendations made by the union itself.

It’s like the old joke about complaining that the food in a restaurant is not any good — and the portions are so small, too.

George Stephenson is a Winnipeg writer.