Real negotiations or simply talks

I know you're not here for the scintillating writing but a few of you do seem interested, like 6000?!?  I'll try to make it interesting but let me warn you that some of this can be a little dry.

Yesterday, a parent said to me, "I get it.  It's about freely entering into a contract."  Yes, that's the idea. Contracts are agreements that are entered into freely.  So the concept of an imposed contract, an agreement imposed by a third party, is a bit of an oxymoron.  I'm no lawyer, not even close, but to impose an agreement is generally outside the law except in the case of a designated essential service.  In other cases, employees have a right to negotiate.

If teachers had been deemed an essential service, that is "necessary for the safety or security of the public or a segment of the public" (http://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/pubs_pol/hrpubs/TBM_11B/esao-esea-eng.asp), there would have been certain processes, such as arbitration, that would have come into play to try to ensure fairness in the negotiation process.  I'm not saying that arbitration is always fair or even often fair, but it's a process to try and provide some fairness or perhaps, as some of you are no doubt thinking, for the appearance of fairness.  Yet Ontario teachers were not deemed to be an essential service but still a contract was imposed. 

How can that be?  Weren't you as school boards negotiating for months? 

Well the answer is yes and no.  Yes, there was the appearance of negotiations.  And yes, school board representatives as employers were in rooms with union representatives for many days.  We tried our best and we did negotiate some relatively minor mostly local issues during that period.  But no, not really, as we had been specifically told in advance what the substantial terms of the agreement had to be.

Still we tried.  Meeting after meeting for days, we met with OSSTF (our educational staff and secondary teacher union) and ETFO (elementary teacher union) representatives.  They were at the table with us over many long meetings.

Now the question I have is this: how does one truly negotiate when the terms are spelled out in advance and when there is very little room for give-and-take, very little wiggle room?  To confirm what the unions have said all along, this wasn't about wages.  They came in willing to accept a 0% increase.  

From my perspective, and I want to emphasize that this is my opinion only, the government wanted a number of other things as well.  The first was to clear long-term liabilities off its books.  The sick leave provisions were an issue because with new government accounting methods, accrued sick leave shows up as a liability not just on the books of school boards but also on the books of the Government of Ontario. 

Okay, so here's a shout-out for the Ministry folks currently rolling their eyes.  I know this oversimplifies it a tad but this is a blog.

I believe the government's second goal of these, ummm, let's call them talks, was a standardized collective agreement for teachers and educational staff.  One standardized agreement allows for easier provincial bargaining.  For example when bargaining with doctors, I believe the government only has to deal with one organization and only with one agreement too (though there may be sub-agreements for different medical specialities).  No doubt one or a few standard collective agreements are much easier to negotiate and administer than dozens of local agreements with differing terms formerly in place between school boards and unions. I believe the government wanted this to happen without appearing that it had imposed a standardized agreement.

In a nutshell, this is how we got here today.  There were talks so tightly controlled from the start that they could hardly be characterized as negotiations.  Still they were called just that and in early January, the Minister imposed a contract saying that there had been fair negotiations.  From where I stand, there were never real and substantial negotiations; that is the honest give-and-take that makes for a fair agreement.  



Thank you to everyone who sent me their good wishes.  I want to particularly thank my trustee colleagues but I do have a question for you that was asked of me.  No need to get back to me on this; it's just an interesting question.  Has your board discussed contributing to or do you know if your board will be contributing to the costs surrounding the OLRB hearing?  I didn't know the answer to this one when it was asked of me.  But OLRB participation is a governance question so perhaps it's something to ask about.

The views expressed in this blog are my personal views only. Coming up next -- those wily grandmothers of the Pacific Rim ... and what they can teach us about negotiations.