Confusing lessons

Imust admit I still don’t get it. I don’t understand the logic of Ontario’s teacher’s job actions, or their version of history. Since I wrote about the elimination of school events at my daughter’s school, including track meets, clubs and other activities, I’ve had plenty of folks try to explain it to me. Some rather earnestly. While I am sure I am thicker than most—the arguments just don’t add up.

Let’s look at the basic logic problems. A 12- year-old boy is found bullying a Grade 4 girl in the school yard. Upon discovering this situation, no teacher would suggest the remedy is for the girl to find a younger, smaller kindergarten student minding her own business and then kick her repeatedly until the 12-year-old boy stops his bullying behaviour. It is a ludicrous notion, yet week after week it is children and their families who are being punished in a dispute that has nothing to do with them.

“We are hopeful the public will see that we are trying to do what is best for the students,” said Ken Coran, president of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers Federation, said on Monday.

It staggers reason. Mr. Coran and his union colleagues are wildly deluded if they believe the average family is thankful for being penalized by this coddled group of public servants in their fight over money, benefits and the right to withhold services when they want them enriched. Furthermore he and his colleagues have made a more grievous miscalculation, that in arousing the public’s ire in this way, it plays out well for the union in the long run.

But back to the logic problems.

Next week high school teachers intend to join their elementary colleagues and withdraw extracurricular activities such as hockey, theatre production and social clubs. (The union has threatened to fine and publicly shame teachers who ignore this job action.) Meanwhile elementary teachers say they will begin rotating daylong strikes.

The stated goal of these actions is to create enough misery and anguish to push the Ontario government to repeal the contentious Bill 115—the legislation that suspends their right to strike and freezes wages for two years.

That might be a logical, if misdirected, strategy— were the Ontario legislature open. But it’s not. And it’s not likely to open until next spring—well after a successor to Dalton McGuinty is named in late January and perhaps not until an election is held.

So there is no legislature to repeal Bill 115. Yet the teachers’ union have chosen to ramp up the withdrawal of services with no plausible remedy available, in an act of what can only be described as willful belligerence. There is no mechanism to get what they want—so they will exact their revenge upon the children it is their job to guide.

Some suggest this fight is about democracy— that Ontarians should be outraged by the suspension of teachers’ right to strike. And perhaps many are eager to preserve a right fewer than 30 per cent of Ontario workers share—but it’s not about democracy.

Notwithstanding the heavy-handed nature of some of our governments, all Ontarians retain the right to elect those who lead us and guide our public institutions. When we don’t like the choices made by this government—we can throw these guys out and choose another one. Those are the levers we all share. Many other folks around the world don’t have this basic right—have never had it. It grossly diminishes their plight to suggest this spat between teachers and their employer is a test of democracy. It isn’t.

Others say this fight is about defending the principles of the labour union movement and the hardfought struggles waged by earlier generations to win the right to strike. It is, I think, a harmful twisting of history to draw an analogy between working conditions and living standards of Ontario workers in the earlier part of the last century to those of teachers today. It only serves to distort the experiences and the sacrifices that were made in the name of labour rights in this country.

I would suggest that when you have reached the point at which you and your brethren earn considerably more in a starting salary than the median income in your community—as teachers do here—rising to more than $90,000 under the current contract, it may be time to ease up on the misplaced belligerence.

rick@wellingtontimes.ca