Labour Day weekend. The unofficial end to summer and a holiday purported to recognize the contribution of workers. It also heralds a back-to-school season ironically marked for labour unrest.
Despite some ramblings about “envelopes,” the provincial government has already set the table for wasting yet more of our tax dollars, doling out raises, bonuses and even company shares with wild abandon, oblivious to financial reality or the public interest. Why should negotiations with teachers be any different?
While there has been some movement in negotiations over the summer, we can expect some of the union tactics from last year to carry over into this one. The unions will find no more support for their efforts to use students as hostages in their bid to siphon money away from more pressing uses.
While public sentiment is adamantly opposed to teachers, Kathleen Wynne has proven to be a poor manager of the public good and the public purse.
Clearly, there’s a firm sense that government workers are overpaid, with benefits and pensions that far outstrip those available to the taxpayers footing the bill. That goes double for teachers, given the amount of time off. Times are tough, and the public sector must make sacrifices. As well, parents are in no mood to see school disrupted due to union action – there’s zero sympathy, and no one wants to deal with the fallout of a strike.
Equally important, the public believes the province is perfectly justified in asking for teachers’ cooperation after years of generosity in the name of labour peace.
Given ongoing deficits and this government’s inability to get a handle on proper spending priorities – and the overall financial health of the province suffers for it – the need for wage restraint and rollbacks is evident to all but those who profit to the public’s detriment.
There is a recognizable pattern in school disputes: teachers engage in skirmishes with the province and with their boards, the organizations that set the workaday agendas; parent councils struggle with extracurricular activities and the threat of work stoppages; and, as always, caught in the middle are students who suffer the consequences of decisions made by their elders.
Nobody in this struggle is wholly at fault or wholly blameless, though the vitriol is appropriately aimed at those on the public teat.
Typically, governments argue they are trying to control costs and introduce more public accountability. But their actions are usually more about politics than altruism, and are often in direct contrast to what they tell the public.
The teachers argue they are trying to preserve quality in the schools. But saving jobs and boosting working conditions are the purview of their unions.
Aside from the political wrangling on all sides, students are also faced with changing curricula, compressed learning curves, and a host of strategies stemming from a decades-old desire to inflict all sorts of social experiments on a new generation of kids – as a sideshow this fall, watch for new sex ed. curriculum to be a flashpoint filled with hyperbole and outright lies countered by bureaucratic incompetence and arrogance. Add in the misguided political correctness movement, and it is easy to understand why students feel so squeezed.
No wonder so few are eager to see the arrival of Sept. 8.
