Toronto Substitute Teachers Action Caucus Home | our story | upcoming events | newsletters | questions for the OTBU Executive | Collective Bargaining Priorities | Join the Substitute Teachers‚ Action Caucus. Call the Help Line at 416-588-9090 September 2004 - Uncensored. Produced by Toronto OTBU grassroots activists. Bandits' Newsletter Tells Tall Tales, but cannot hide the fact that... 49% Rise in OT List Spells Jobs Crisis! The bandit crew installed by OSSTF officials, by means of a bogus mail-in ballot vote, and now in control of the Toronto OTBU, issued their second newsletter, the August-September edition. It is truly an amazing collection of tall tales. To pave the way for more contract concessions to management, the writers completely misrepresent the last collective agreement, and try to obscure the fact that they've set up a new bargaining team for the next contract negotiations without holding an election for any of its members! Even more disturbing is the dramatic rise in the number of teachers on the OT list at the Toronto school board. In a fanciful article titled "The Cap", Jerry Daca claims that there was no effective numerical limit on the number of teachers on the TDSB secondary dispatch list since 1998. If so, how would Jerry explain that between June 2001 (when the 'cap' was suspended under pressure from OSSTF officials and TDSB Management), and today, the OT list has increased from 1200 to 1785 names? The average number of jobs per day has remained stable at 510 (including LTO positions). That means there has been a 49% increase in job seekers without any significant increase in daily job assignments. For those with no pension or any other income, that spells crisis. In an article titled "Resumption of Bargaining", Liz Barkley makes the astounding claim that Toronto substitutes actually got a bigger raise than Toronto contract teachers. The fact is that over the last four years, contract teachers got an increase of over 12%, while substitute teachers received a measly 6.1%. That‚s about 1.5% a year for substitutes, which was imposed on us by OSSTF officials during their dictatorial Trusteeship, after they removed our elected local negotiators, and after the settlement was 'ratified' by means of a bogus mail-in ballot vote. (Hundreds of members got no ballot.) Barkley neglects to mention that OSSTF, with her vocal support, gave away our paid annual P.D. Day, abandoned the 'cap', and eroded our drug benefits. The Substitute Teachers' Action Caucus remains committed to restoring the job security 'cap', substantially improving benefits and wages, and will challenge the undemocratic and unrepresentative bargaining team at the Tuesday, Sept. 21, 5 p.m. meeting at 60 Mobile Drive. Please try to attend. Of what are they afraid? OTBU Executive Refuses to Call General Membership Meeting Jennifer Mills, the OSSTF-installed president of the OTBU, acknowledged in mid-August that she received a petition signed by more than 50 OTBU members requiring that a General Membership meeting be held prior to October 7. Her response: "The Executive will call a meeting before Christmas." This stance is clearly in violation of Bylaw 3 of the Toronto OTBU Constitution. Stay tuned for further developments. Who's Really in Charge of the OTBU? The OTBU newsletter announces that the Executive has established "a new office facility at 95 Thorncliffe Drive". They rented an apartment in the building right next door to the residence of -- guess who? -- Liz Barkley, who turns 65 in November. At the bottom of page six one can read the claim that the "Newsletter Editorial Board welcomes and encourages submissions from members for publication". Apparently, they welcome some items more than others. They refused to publish any of the articles submitted in early August by an Action Caucus member. The reason given by the editors -- those devotees of democracy? They claim the articles were "inappropriate". The articles are published here. You be the judge. Let democracy rule. Get Involved in your Future Together we can restore Job Security, Decent Wages, Local Autonomy and Union Democracy. Join the Toronto Substitute Teachers‚ Action Caucus. Attend our monthly meetings. Please make a financial contribution to help us cover the costs of publication, legal defence and the telephone Hot Line 416 - 588-9090. Send a cheque today to: Legal Defence Fund, 526 Roxton Road, Toronto, Ontario M6G 3R4. Support CUPE Local 4400 Work to Rule Campaign The union representing school office staff, caretakers, educational assistants, hall monitors, lunchroom supervisors, adult ed. instructors, and others at the TDSB issued the following statement at Toronto Labour Council: „In 1999 and 2001, members of CUPE Local 4400 (Toronto District School Board) waged effective strikes to defend public education and protect our rights as education workers. Despite recent funding announcements, our schools are still in crisis. The school board is again demanding concessions. Every day, thousands of CUPE members work through our breaks ˆ even our lunch periods ˆ to help students, teachers and parents. This cannot continue. It's time the crisis ended. We have been in negotiations for months. If a fair settlement is not reached by September 15, CUPE 4400 members will start a work-to-rule campaign: We won‚t be coming in early or staying late. We won‚t be working during our breaks or lunch periods. If we still can‚t get a fair settlement, we‚ll have no choice but to expand our work-to-rule. Manners Legacy Looms Large Earl Manners, the four-term past president of OSSTF, is now a full-time chief negotiator for Management at the Trillium Lakelands School Board. Trillium Lakelands, District 15, is in cottage country north east of Toronto, and includes Lindsey, Ontario. This development is hardly surprising for those familiar with Manners' tell tale mistreatment of substitute teachers. Recall that Manners led the concessionary negotiations in 1998 that resulted in increased internal on-call coverage -- which overburdened contract teachers, and devastated substitute teachers' jobs and incomes. He blocked the drive for sector status in OSSTF for substitutes, and he cultivated the appointed Occasional Teacher Committee as his personal echo chamber. Manners facilitated a political purge of the elected leadership of the Toronto OTBU, and in the process he engineered regressive contracts which undermined our job security protection, wages and benefits. Manners piloted through AMPA 2003 anti-democratic amendments to OSSTF Bylaws to make it easier for Provincial Executive to impose Trusteeship on a Bargaining Unit or District, and at the same time removed the right of the members affected to veto it. And finally, he used those new Draconian powers to seize control of the Toronto OTBU, to attack our members' rights, and to push us hard in the direction of liquidation into the larger full-time, contract teachers‚ unit. The struggle to restore democracy and local autonomy continues. But Manners' legacy in OSSTF, like the man himself, looms large. OSSTF Brass Turns Democracy-Bashing into a fine art First they Purge you, Then they Merge you According to reliable internal estimates, Ontario Secondary School Teachers‚ Federation (OSSTF) officials spent over a quarter million dollars in 2002 - 2004 to purge the Toronto Occasional Teachers‚ Bargaining Unit (OTBU) of its democratically elected officers. Subversion of the best OT collective agreement in Ontario, and the drowning of a democratic local constitution, were direct consequences of this profligate and repressive exercise by Federation officers. Next they will try to dissolve the Toronto substitute teachers, and all OT units across Ontario, into the larger regular teacher bargaining units where the poorly treated substitutes would still pay dues but have almost no audible voice in the union. But repression comes at a price. Huge sums of money were consumed by several sets of hearings at OSSTF Judicial Council and at P.C. Appeals Committee. The costly and debilitating litigation was initiated by a tiny group of affluent retirees, led by former OSSTF/OTF president Liz Barkley. Defeated in three rounds of local elections, Liz and her friends laid spurious and vexatious charges against re-elected Toronto OTBU President Barry Weisleder, and then against replacement OTBU President Maureen Malmud, and then against most of the remaining elected OTBU Executive, and finally against the locally elected Bargaining Team members. The charges provided diplomatic cover for a political purge of Stalinist proportions. The past two years of official OSSTF abuse and mistreatment of Toronto OTBU members have been punctuated by the following events: * Eviction of the OTBU from the OSSTF District12 building (where the OTBU paid about $12,000 annually for use of its office space) on trumped up building security charges; * Seizure of Toronto OTBU funds by the District12 Treasurer and the Provincial Treasurer, so that the OTBU could not fund a legal defence of its democratically elected local officers; * Removal, and banishment from holding office of Barry (first for 18 months, then 32 months, then 44 months), and later banishment of Maureen (for 12 months). Most requests to appeal J.C. decisions were dismissed. Ontario Superior Court Justice Douglas Coo found „a strong prima facie case‰ had been made that OSSTF violated its own rules and natural justice. * Imposition of Trusteeship on the OTBU for 14 months. This was done after the P.E. and OSSTF legal counsel knowingly misled the OSSTF Annual Meeting of Provincial Assembly, AMPA 2003. They stated that a unit can appeal and overturn Trusteeship at the Ontario Labour Relations Board within the first year, and on that false basis persuaded AMPA to remove the historic right of local members to veto Trusteeship; * Negotiation of a very regressive contract which made major concessions to Management on job security, on paid P.D. and other benefits, and agreed to inferior wage improvements. The negotiation was conducted by provincial bureaucrats who displaced elected OTBU members. The Œtakeover team‚ violated every major goal of the OTBU members‚ bargaining mandate; * Ratification of the bad contract by means of a bogus mail-in ballot process which failed to mail ballots to hundreds of active members, misled members as to the true nature of the contract settlement, and utterly corrupted the ballot count; * Repeated publication and mailing by OSSTF Trustee Tom Byers of malicious propaganda and one-sided polemics, in the form of his ŒOTBU newsletter‚, which he used to demonize the elected local leadership ˆ as did the OSSTF provincial publication „Update‰. Byers also used the local newsletter to promote an undemocratic replacement constitution for the OTBU ˆ which was Œadopted‚ at a non-school, non-OSSTF meeting site that cost over $1200 to rent. * Capture of the Toronto OTBU Executive in May 2004 by a cabal of affluent retirees led by Liz Barkley. They Œwon‚ by means of a mail-in vote in which the identity of the voters is not verified, in which 66 of the 493 mailed votes were disqualified, and in which two incumbents were barred from seeking office. Most voters met few, if any, of the candidates. It was a mail-in ballot procedure like the one used by Maggie Thatcher to break the British Miners‚ Union ˆ a method of voting not used in any other OSSTF OTBU or any other OSSTF unit. * Not surprisingly, the new executive refuses to hold a General Membership meeting this Fall, despite a petition by members, submitted in accordance with the OTBU Constitution. The new executive also refuses to publish in its newsletter articles contributed by its political opponents. OSSTF revenue, which derives mainly from members‚ dues, continues to be misspent on subverting local democracy. It was lavished on litigation at Ontario Superior Court, and on Mediation efforts (which were initiated by victim OTBU members, but scuttled by OSSTF officials). It was spent on the bogus mail-in Œratification‚ vote, on voluminous pro-Trusteeship propaganda, and on lengthy legal submissions to the OLRB and other bodies, to dodge accountability for OSSTF misdeeds. In the bureaucrats‚ unremitting battle against union democracy, it appears that money is no object. Is it any wonder when OSSTF leaders like past-president Earl Manners join the ranks of management as a high-priced chief negotiator? The apple doesn‚t fall far from the tree. OSSTF officials now face a $10,000 law suit at Small Claims Court over unpaid but approved (pre-Trusteeship) OTBU expenses. On Feb. 17 OSSTF officers rebuffed an offer to settle the initial law suit (re: undemocratic removal of local officers) at Superior Court for $1. The bureaucrats demand that OSSTF be paid $50,000 (after causing equivalent losses to OTBU members). They also demand that the undemocratically removed Toronto OTBU president sign a pledge that he will forever refrain from active participation in union affairs!  Does this reflect confidence in union democracy and a commitment to members rights? In the light of all that has happened you might well ask:  What on earth is the purpose of this extravagantly repressive agenda? In our view, it is simply this: OSSTF officials want to merge or dissolve the 1700+ member Toronto OTBU into the 6,000 member Toronto regular contract teachers‚ unit. They want to dissolve all the remaining OTBUs, including the largest ones, into the corresponding STBUs. This will be followed by the complete subordination of occasional teachers interests in OSSTF. Why does the OSSTF brass push merger‚ so much? Because it would save the bureaucracy a lot of money now spent in servicing the OTBUs and addressing the needs of substitute teachers. But what ever happened to democracy and local autonomy in OSSTF? Is this how ordinary OSSTF members want their dues money spent? Help put a stop to the waste, the abuses, and the undemocratic practices emanating from 60 Mobile Drive. Make a donation to the Legal Defence Fund, 526 Roxton Road, Toronto, Ontario M6G 3R4. Remember: An injury to one, is an injury to all. Contact the Toronto Substitute Teachers‚ Action Caucus at 416 - 588-9090. Come to the Workers‚ Solidarity and Union Democracy Coalition founding conference on Saturday, October 16, 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., at OISE room 8-200, 252 Bloor Street West, at St. George subway station.  Join with a diverse range of labour and community activists committed to mutual support and union reform. OSSTF Opposes Double Dipping (This article was submitted to the OTBU Newsletter, but the executive refused to publish it.) Speaking to the OSSTF Provincial Council on September 17, 2002, then-Acting General Secretary Jim Ross reported on a meeting with Ontario‚s Deputy Minister of Education on the subject of teacher shortages. Jim Ross told the OSSTF P.C., „The General Secretary raised the concern that many vacant teaching positions are being filled by teachers who have recently retired and are hired back on LTO contracts, thereby preventing new teachers from being hired. These teachers are Œdouble dipping‚ on their pensions. The Deputy Minister was advised that OSSTF is compiling data on these cases across the province in order that the Ministry can alert school boards that hiring should be for new teachers as opposed to the Œdouble dip‚ process that is currently taking place. (Report of the General Secretary to Provincial Council, P.C. #6-02/03, page 7) Substitute Teachers Educate the Education Minister Pursuant to the OSSTF position on Œdouble dipping‚, a large delegation of Toronto secondary school substitute teachers brought concerns about fair work opportunities, and also about work place democracy, to Gerard Kennedy, Ontario's Minister of Education, on the morning of Thursday, June 24. The visit was organized by the Toronto Substitute Teachers' Action Caucus, a democratic rank and file movement of OSSTF members at the Toronto District School Board. Despite a promise by Ministry staff of „only up to ten minutes of the Minister's time", the substitute teachers first spoke for nearly an hour to the Education Ministry officials who deal directly with the TDSB and the Toronto Catholic School Board. Then, after Mr. Kennedy arrived, they educated the Minister of Education on job security, employment equity, and union representation issues ... for close to 25 minutes. After the friendly dialogue, and following a suggestion by Ministry officials, several of the substitute teachers went to the Ontario College of Teachers, on Bloor Street east of Yonge. One member eventually spoke to the OCT deputy registrar. Although Mr. Kennedy made no policy commitments, stating that he had to study the teachers' proposals, he did say that there would be follow-up, including a future meeting with him to discuss the issues thoroughly. This encounter shows that direct action can facilitate direct communication, education, and potentially can foster further positive results. Below is the text of the requests submitted by the Action Caucus directly to Gerard Kennedy on June 24, 2004. „Mr. Kennedy, these are the concerns of many substitute teachers: 1. Stop the double dipping. We want the 20 teaching days per school year limit on teachers with pensions to be reinstated immediately. There is no general teacher shortage to justify the extensive use of retired teachers in the secondary schools of Ontario. In 2001 the 20 day limit was replaced with a 95 day annual limit. This continues in effect until 2006. Actually, if a retired teacher‚s 95th teaching day occurs near the beginning or the middle of a month, the retired teacher is allowed to continue teaching to the end of the month with no loss of pension ˆ thus the 95 day limit can really extend to 114 days. Thus the retired teachers who work as substitutes (with many retirees enjoying pensions of more than $50,000 a year) are double dipping, at public expense and to the detriment of the teachers‚ pension fund (to which they are no longer contributing). They are taking work away from non-pensioner substitute teachers who earn on average less than $30,000 a year and who typically have little or no other income. Many of us who rely on substitute teaching to make a living have lost an enormous amount of work and income as a result of this. In addition, when retired teachers are hired for Long Term Occasional positions (and they do obtain the vast majority of LTO assignments owing to their past in-school connections), they are often paid more than twice the rate of other substitutes because of their higher experience placement on the teacher pay grid. This situation does not make sense from a fiscal, social justice, or pedagogical point of view. 2. Restore the right to choose. We want the government to restore the right of substitute teachers to be able to choose the union to which we belong. Amendments to the Education Act of Ontario adopted in the Fall of 1997 converted all occasional teachers into statutory members of one or another teachers‚ federation. The forced transfer of occasional teachers, many of whom in Toronto were members of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union, into the teachers‚ federations, took place without consultation and without any vote of the teachers affected. Now top OSSTF officials state that they want to dissolve the substitute teacher bargaining units into the full time contract teacher units -- where substitutes would pay dues but have virtually no voice. Substitute teachers want the same rights as public school board support staff, health care workers, municipal employees, workers in the broader public sector, and workers throughout the private sector. We want the right to vote and to choose our union. 3. Investigate the arbitrary and undemocratic practices of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers‚ Federation. We ask the Ontario government to investigate and direct the Ontario Labour Relations Board (OLRB), or create a special body, to conduct a full public hearing into the abuse, mistreatment and abrogation of the representation and collective bargaining rights of the Toronto substitute teachers by OSSTF. During a 14-month long Trusteeship that ended in June 2004, the provincial executive of OSSTF removed the elected local executive and negotiating team of the Toronto Substitute Teachers, gutted the local collective agreement, imposed a bogus mail-in ballot process for contract 'ratification' and for local elections, and facilitated the replacement of the local democratic constitution with an undemocratic alternative. 4. Please call us substitute teachers. We want the Ontario government to replace the legal designation of our occupational group as „occasional teachers with the designation used in every other Canadian province, and in every other English-speaking jurisdiction in the world: „substitute teachers. This term accurately describes our professional status, our role and our function. It avoids connotations like temporary, irregular, amateur, dilettante, and supplementary-income-earner commonly associated with the other term. „Occasional is a term that reinforces negative attitudes which have been used by employers to deny substitute teachers decent wages, job security and benefits. We are substitute teachers. We maintain the continuity of learning in the schools ˆ every school day. Substitute teachers have no substitutes. Setting the Record Straight First Post-Trusteeship Newsletter Full of Errors and Omissions (This article was submitted to the OTBU newsletter, but the executive refused to publish it.) The „Message from the President‰ in the June-July 2004 newsletter proclaims that „There were over 500 mail-in votes to count‰ on May 13 in the OTBU Executive election. This is untrue. Only 493 ballots were received in the mail, according to what OSSTF staff told scrutineers at 4:30 p.m. on May 13.  Sixty-six of those 493 votes were disqualified. They were set aside and not counted, according to OSSTF Trustee Tom Byers who ran the election, due to misplacement of identification slips by voters. This is a repeat of the gross dysfunction that marred the mail-in contract ratification vote in October 2003. Many members are still confused by the complicated mail-in vote procedure.  Thus over 13% of the mailed votes were not counted. We never had such a high rate of spoiled ballots during 20 years of votes conducted at membership meetings. On June 4, 2002, when 230 OTBU members attended the last in-person vote for executive, there were only 2 spoiled ballots, and it is like those 2 were intentionally spoiled.  But in the latest election, barely 25% of the 1706 members on the TDSB Secondary OT list in May 2004 cast votes that were counted in the end. Besides, we need to ask: Did this 25% constitute an informed vote? It is very doubtful. Few of the voters ever met, let alone questioned, most of the candidates running for office. In fact, there is no way to verify that the votes counted were actually cast by OTBU members. Anyone opening the mail at a member‚s home address could have mailed in a vote. Worst of all, the election was preceded by a steady stream of negative propaganda issued by Trustee Tom Byers, and by OSSTF officials (in Update, March 30, 2004), attacking the incumbents, most of whom were candidates of the Action Caucus. Two incumbents, elected in June 2002 but subsequently purged from office by OSSTF officials, were prevented from standing for election. Given all these facts, how democratic could such an Œelection‚ be? Now let‚s turn to the newsletter‚s errors of omission. The newsletter provides no notice of an OTBU General Membership meeting this Fall. Toronto OTBU members are accustomed to four or five General Meetings per year. But Jennifer Mills told this writer in July that a meeting in September or October is „not likely‰. She said, „There won‚t be a General Meeting any time soon‰. What happened to the ŒNew Vision‚ promise of more democracy in the OTBU? Fortunately, the Action Caucus has gathered enough members‚ signatures on a petition to require the new executive to convene a meeting before October 7. Let‚s see whether the executive complies with its own constitution, Bylaw 3, and holds the meeting as required. The newsletter editor appeals to members to write articles and to submit them to the newsletter ˆ but no specific postal or e-mail address is given. We are told to send correspondence to 60 Mobile Drive or to the District 12 building on Bathurst St. But the OTBU has no office in either location. Both the provincial and district offices are closed in August.  District 12 OSSTF announced on its web site in June that new OSSTF jackets are available, free of charge, to members who participate in Toronto‚s annual Labour Day Parade on September 6. But there is no mention of this entitlement in the July or August newsletters.  What a start for the post-Trusteeship regime! Stay tuned and see whether you can spot a trend. History Work Shop:   * LIFE IN THE 1500'S (We thank Chris Sojka for this Œhistorical‚ item) The next time you are washing your hands and complain because the water temperature isn't just how you like it, think about how things used to be. Here are some facts about life in England in the1500s: Most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in May, and still smelled pretty good by June. However, they were starting to smell, so brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the body odor. Hence the custom today of carrying a bouquet when getting married. Baths consisted of a big tub filled with hot water. The man of the house had the privilege of the nice clean water, then all the other sons and men, then the women and finally the children Last of all the babies. By then the water was so dirty you could actually lose someone in it. Hence the saying, "Don't throw the baby out with the bath water." Houses had thatched roofs ˆ thick straw-piled high, with no wood underneath. It was the only place for animals to get warm, so all the cats and other small animals (mice, bugs) lived in the roof. When it rained it became slippery and sometimes the animals would slip and off the roof. Hence the saying "It's raining cats and dogs." There was nothing to stop things from falling into the house. This posed a real problem in the bedroom where bugs and other droppings could mess up your nice clean bed. Hence, a bed with big posts and a sheet hung over the top afforded some protection. That's how canopy beds came into existence. The floor was dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt. Hence the saying "dirt poor." The wealthy had slate floors that would get slippery in the winter when wet , so they spread thresh (straw) on floor to help keep their footing. As the winter wore on, they adding more thresh until when you opened the door it would all start slipping outside. A piece of wood was placed in the entranceway. Hence the saying a "threshold." (Getting quite an education, aren't you?) In those old days, they cooked in the kitchen with a big kettle that always hung over the fire. Every day they lit the fire and added things to the pot. They ate mostly vegetables and did not get much meat. They would eat the stew for dinner, leaving leftovers in the pot to get cold overnight and then start over the next day. Sometimes stew had food in it that had been there for quite a while. Hence the rhyme, "Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old." Sometimes they could obtain pork, which made them feel quite special. When visitors came over, they would hang up their bacon to show off. It was a sign of wealth that a man could "bring home the bacon." They would cut off a little to share with guests and would all sit around and "chew the fat." Those with money had plates made of pewter. Food with high acid content caused some of the lead to leach onto the food, causing lead poisoning death. This happened most often with tomatoes, so for the next 400years or so, tomatoes were considered poisonous. Bread was divided according to status. Workers got the burnt bottom of the loaf, the family got the middle, and guests got the top, or "upper crust." Lead cups were used to drink ale or whisky. The combination would sometimes knock the imbibers out for a couple of days. Someone walking along the road would take them for dead and prepare them for burial. They were laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the family would gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake up. Hence the custom of holding a "wake." England is old and small and the local folks started running out of places to bury people. So they would dig up coffins and would take the bones to a "bone-house" and reuse the grave. When reopening these coffins, some coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they realized they had been burying people alive. So they would tie a string on the wrist of the corpse, lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell. Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night (the "graveyard shift") to listen for the bell; thus, someone could be "saved by the bell" or was considered a "dead ringer." And that's the truth... Now , whoever said that History was boring. * Could OSSTF officials reduce substitute teachers to such primitive conditions? Don't let them. Join the Action Caucus today. Contact Us: Hotline: 416 - 588 - 9090 | email: Substitute Teachers' Action Caucus