If we’ve learned anything during the protracted negotiations between the province and the Nova Scotia Teachers Union it’s that there is a massive gulf between how teachers, students and parents understand the current state of public education, and how premier Stephen McNeil sees it. This gap was never clearer than when McNeil claimed he needed to steamroll over the democratic rights of teachers so the education system could go back to normal. The reason we’re in this mess is because McNeil still doesn’t understand that the system has not been working.
The rank-and-file members of the NSTU have used their ability to collectively bargain to demand not just proper wages and benefits for themselves, but also improvements in their classrooms and better supports for their students. After seeing the hope they have placed in politicians go nowhere, teachers took it upon themselves to use the threat of job action to try to force the current government to make meaningful changes to education. For as long as I can remember, every party leader has promised to fix education, and none has delivered. Indeed, they’ve all made it worse. With no other means of forcing politicians to keep their word, teachers used the only real power that they have: the threat of withholding their labour. Work-to-rule didn’t create a crisis in our public school system—it simply made visible the crisis that was already there.
Unfortunately, Nova Scotia’s Liberal government appears to be so focused on using negotiations with teachers to set a wage pattern for the rest of the public sector that it’s developed tunnel vision. For McNeil and his cabinet this has never been about education, it’s been an obsession with bringing workers and their unions to heel. Because the province couldn’t negotiate successfully, almost the entire public service is in engaged in contract negotiations, in the same year the Liberals are anxious to call an election. No wonder teachers think they aren’t being listened to: They want to have a hard conversation about the state of education, while the premier is more worried about his next campaign and squeezing a few more concessions out of workers.
It seems likely that teachers will have a contract imposed upon them early next week. They won’t be allowed to vote on it. There won’t even be any neutral third-party arbitration, just the employer overriding the democratic rights of unionized workers. Sadly, the narrow focus of this government means that after years of negotiating, months of work-to-rule and a day-long lockout of students, the new contract will solve none of the underlying issues that plague public education. After this whole clusterfuck, Nova Scotians are being promised nothing but more of the same problems we had when this started.
For awhile things will indeed go back to normal, just like the premier wants, but if he had been listening, he would have realized that a return to normal is not what people want. The cumulative damage of decades of neglect mean the normal situation in classrooms is simply unsustainable. Teachers rejected three contracts because a normal day is one in which a lack of resources and support means too many teachers struggle to teach and too many students struggle to learn.
Teachers wanted the premier to listen to them and try to improve a vital public service. In other words they wanted him to do something that is altogether abnormal for a politician in 2017. They wanted him to rise to the occasion and work with them to find real, long-term solutions to the problems in public education. Instead, McNeil is responding by unilaterally legislating a contract on them that leaves those problems untouched.
Opinionated is a rotating column by Halifax writers featured regularly in The Coast. The views published are those of the author.
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This article appears in Feb 9-15, 2017.
It seems to me, that, as you have stated…..after DECADES…of nothing being done….that you might find that the problem may have “started” by what the union has brought to the table. Indeed, if the “very same” issues had been stated AT THE FIRST…instead of wages, long service awards, and the REAL ISSUES ARE INDEED the disciplines of the students, and the ability to fail them if needed….then the REAL ISSUES should have superceeded ANYTHING else. IF INDEED it is about these issues I would suggest that you find a union that will put THE REAL ISSUES forward and forget about the rest.
The NSTU is the major contributor to the current mess. Keep in mind that school administrators are mostly NSTU members as are most of the boffins at the Dept of Education. Every new half-baked idea they come up with gets included eventually into the system. And the NSTU’s stranglehold on the process prevents any real change from ever happening. Every time someone from outside the system proposes something that is not part of the current paradigm the reaction is instantaneous, invoking harm to the children, lack of knowledge of how teaching works, and the current mantra of disrespecting the beloved teachers. It can never be changed as long as they remain in charge.
The entire public education system needs to be blown up and started over from scratch – hopefully without the NSTU.
Three strikes Liette Doucet…yer out…!
No, the reason we’re in this mess is because the Tories and the Dippers damn near bankrupted this Province and we have no money to make these teaching conditions what they need to be. The Liberals are acting like adults and not throwing money we don’t have around.
Bottom line is this. The NDP cut 65 million from the education budget yet did not touch the NSTU golden handshake AND gave them an 8% raise. Stay with me people. Although there were a few token protests from teachers there was NOTHING close to the magnitude of what we see now. Ultimately the teachers happily signed that deal. The question is this. IF the union was so concerned with teaching conditions, and IF it is not about the money and it is “All about the kids”, why did the teachers allow the NDP to cut 65 million from their budget and roll over and sign a contract that gave them an 8% raise? The current government has put money into the budget, not taken it away, yet teachers are all up in arms because they are not going to get the raise they want. I ask you. Is it REALLY about the kids?
This set of labour negotiations has shown the NSTU and teachers for what they really are: mean and greedy. This is all about the obscene retirement bonus and more money in their pockets. The teachers have shown that they will enthusiastically hurt students to get their greedy financial demands. Shame on them!
A letter from 2012 opposition MLA Karen Casey, decrying the actions of 2016 education minister Karen Casey. She does mis-spell the word “Liberal” a couple of times, writing “NDP,” but I would blame that on the NDP being the government in 2012. Casey’s anger at a government that would not prioritize smaller classroom sizes and the provision of enough in-classroom supports, as teachers were demanding in 2012, is palpable.
http://karencasey.ca/index.php/mla-report-archives/6-students-go-to-school-to-learn