Monday, April 25, 2016
An Ontario judge has found that the provincial government "substantially interfered" with teachers' right to collective bargaining.
In 2012, in the midst of very contentious bargaining with a number of public sector unions, including AMAPCEO, then-Premier Dalton McGuinty’s government passed Bill 115 – dubbed the “Putting Students First Act.” The act imposed new “collective agreements” on workers in the education sector, including teachers, educational assistants, and support staff and stripped benefits and collective agreement provisions that had been negotiated over decades. Mr. McGuinty then promptly resigned and prorogued the legislature. It was in the midst of this labour relations environment, when faced with the alternative of legislated take-aways - that AMAPCEO OPS members reluctantly accepted a concessionary contract.
The Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario (ETFO), CUPE Ontario, the Ontario Secondary School Teachers Federation (OSSTF), Unifor, and OPSEU filed a Charter challenge to Bill 115. AMAPCEO’s law firm, Goldblatt Partners, represented ETFO in the case.
In a ruling on April 20, 2016 the Superior Court of Justice of Ontario found that Bill 115 substantially interfered with collective bargaining, and is a violation of section 2(d) of the Charter.
“This is an important ruling in favour of free and fair collective bargaining,” said Dave Bulmer, AMAPCEO President. “It also goes to show how heavily the government, as an Employer, can stack the deck against bargaining agents. It is only now, after nearly four years, that a court has ruled what we knew all along: that the Premier’s office was interfering in collective bargaining in violation of the Canadian Charter. In the meantime, all of us in the public sector have had to negotiate in this labour relations environment.”
At the request of the parties, the court has not yet offered a remedy.
Read the summary of the decision prepared by Goldblatt Partners.
The contracts of three of AMAPCEO’s bargaining units – Ontario Public Service (OPS), Office of the Provincial Advocate for Children and Youth (OPACY) and Health Quality Ontario (HQO) – expire on March 31, 2018. AMAPCEO members have accepted across the board increases below the rate of inflation during each year from 2012-2017, including four years of zero per cent increases.
In their next rounds of bargaining, members in each unit will be looking to make up the losses in real income they have faced during the government’s six years of forced “net zero compensation” policy.