Thoughts on the Bargaining

Busy, busy busy! It’s back to school and start up is always one of the busiest times to be a teacher. I just wanted to put something together to help wrap my head around the upcoming negotiations since it really seems like it has been awhile. I also believe as the STF bargaining committee meets with the Government trustee team and goes through the bargaining process, I think there are some important facts that can’t be overlooked by the committee when they bargain and by teachers in evaluating any agreement that comes forth.

 Firstly, I know the STF is trying to ensure a teacher’s voice in developing new educational policy so we can avoid what happened in the past. This is one of the Government’s biggest coups in this negotiation, they are using setting up a sound governance policy as a bargaining chip. In fact many of the responses I got from the STF in our first collective agreement, which was a measly 5.5% over 4 years (not even close to inflation), was the fact that there were other gains other than financial. I quote the STF in an email:

 “Does the salary component represent the value of the work you do? Definitely not. Was the Teachers’ Bargaining Committee and Provincial Executive “happy” to bring these numbers out to teachers. No. Is there more that could be shook loose? Not likely. Are there other gains within the Agreements? Yes, albeit not on the monetary front. The Partnership Agreement is significant because it provides the process to deal with many of the issues that were brought forward in the Proposals for Teacher Collective Bargaining document.”

 I implore the bargaining team to not allow this “Agreement” in any form hamper a fair and reasonable salary increase for teachers. Setting up good governance is not something we should be paying for, LITERALLY.

 What is a fair and reasonable salary?

The first year of our agreement has already passed. In the timeframe that has already passed the CPI has increased by 2.47%. Some people have argued that this is not how the CPI is calculated, but with some research this is as close as we can come with our numbers. These increases represent the rise in prices from one year ago in that month. Since we have spent money on these goods in each of these months, the cost of living has indeed increased 2.47% as compared to the previous year.

September 2013- 1.5%

October 2013- 1.5%
November 2013- 1.4%
December 2013- 2.3%
January 2014- 2.3%
February 2014- 2.3%
March 2014- 2.8%
April 2014- 2.8%- Highest in Canada
May 2014- 2.5%
June 2014- 2.2%
July 2014- 2.5%
August 2014- 2.7% - Highest in Canada

Normally you do not have the luxury of knowing what the CPI is when negotiating a contract, but since we are a year behind this is information that we cannot ignore. An acceptable increase for year one starts with 2.47% with me BUT there is another huge factor to consider dealing with instructional hours:

Instructional hours previously were 900 to 925 hours as per this SSB article. http://www.saskschoolboards.ca/advocacy/newsletter/2012/Apr12.pdf

The Government increased the minimum instructional hours to 950 for each school division. So each teacher was mandated to instruct an extra, at a minimum, 25 hours, and upwards of 50 hours. Keeping in mind these are instructional hours, this is equivalent to adding 5-10 working days assuming 5 hours of instructional time per day. I know that we didn’t add 5-10 teaching days, but we did increase our day’s length by 15-20 minutes in most cases.

I don’t know any occupation where you could add at least one week’s worth of work to an employee’s workload and not give any compensation for said work. Based on a class 4 max salary teacher, one week’s worth of work given 52 weeks in a year, is about $1500 per week. $1500 is about an 1.9% increase in wages.

Combine the CPI of 2.47% and a fair wage of 1.9% increase representing the at LEAST one extra week’s worth of work teachers are putting in this year and you have my BOTTOM line number of 4.37%. Some people might argue that this would be too high, but considering the cost of living is 2.47%, and we live in a have province at a boom time according to our own Government, they have to pay their professionals accordingly. As for the wage increase for the extra time, it’s fair. Of course I expect to be compensated for the extra work. It’s a basic labour law, more mandated work means a higher salary.

As for the next 3 years of the contract inflation history has been hovering around 2% the past 4 years.

 What is acceptable to me is a contract of 4.5%, 2%, 2%, 2%. All in all this represents 10.5% over 4 years. This is not a greedy contract, this is simply us keeping pace with inflation and being fairly compensated for the extra work that we were mandated to do.

One last point to consider. At the STF meetings regarding the last contract our own bargaining team kept pointing to the other deals being stuck by SUN and CUPE and saying ours is a little better. Can OUR OWN bargaining team stop comparing us to unions that are not entirely composed of PROFESSIONALS? Aim higher bargaining team. We are professionals and deserve to be compensated accordingly. The government is sitting back and laughing at the fact they made these other unions settle for less than inflation. We cannot do the same.

Feel free to share with me what you feel is fair and why, and spread the word and keep up the talk with teachers. Being informed is our best weapon.