The Teacher Indentured Servitude Act

Abstract

THE LATEST Ontario education crisis has stumped the adjectivally challenged. Draconian, Dickensian, dictatorial, coercive, and poisonous are among the descriptors routinely used by the critics of Bill 74, otherwise known as the Accountability Act. The critics charge that the bill has nothing to do with accountability and everything to do with accounting. By squeezing more work out of fewer teachers, the number of teachers required to staff the province's high schools will be reduced, thereby saving money that can underwrite the government's tax-cutting agenda. Nonsense, replies Education Minister Janet Ecker. According to her government, Bill 74 is little more than housekeeping, merely legislative insurance to guarantee that the government's will cannot be thwarted by uncooperative unions or weak-kneed school boards. In her view, Bill 74 was necessary because too many negotiated agreements were circumventing the intent of Bill 160, which was designed to force employers to assign an additional class to each high school teacher. However, by declaring scheduled remedial assistance and other in-school activities to be instruction, it was possible to achieve Bill 160's mandated 1,250 instructional minutes per week per teacher without assigning teachers additional courses. Both teachers and boards seemed satisfied with this compromise, and collective agreements were being reached with remarkably little conflict. However, in the minister's own riding (electoral division) of Durham, the school board dug in its heels and refused to be a party to contract that exploited the alleged loopholes contained in Bill 160. The government-appointed arbitrator imposed a settlement that assigned an additional class to each teacher's workload. Durham's public high school teachers responded by withdrawing their participation in activities. A frustrated minister realized that, despite the reams of education legislation introduced by her government, she had no power to order teachers to resume voluntary activities. Bill 74 is designated to take care of this oversight by declaring volunteerism to be compulsory. In classic newspeak fashion, Bill 74 purges the word extracurricular from Ontario's educational lexicon and substitutes co-instructional. The bill goes on to define a co- instructional activity as any activity that supports the operation of schools, from sports programs and staff meetings to cultural activities (and, perhaps, janitorial services, fund raising, and photocopier maintenance). The bill excludes co-instructional activity from the scope of collective bargaining and/or arbitration, which means that a significant part of teachers' work would now be legislated rather than negotiated or chosen. New problem, old solution. The Ontario Ministry of Education has defined every problem in the education system as a function of too much teacher influence and too little provincial authority. Thus the practice of letting teachers be in charge of their school's syllabus would have to end. Under Bill 74, school boards would determine the nature and extent of co-instructional activities to be offered in their jurisdiction, following consultation with parent councils and administrators. The minister would approve or reject these plans. Teachers would have no role other than implementing the activities assigned to them by their principals, who would be free to demand as much compulsory, unpaid overtime from teachers as they pleased. Infuriated teachers pointed out that the bill made it hypothetically possible to assign teacher to do anything, anywhere, day of the week or year, anywhere on the planet. This observation led the Ontario Federation of Labour to nickname Bill 74 the Teacher Indentured Servitude Act. Although a number of other hot-button issues on the government's education agenda were buried in Bill 74, the clauses dealing with co- instructional activities dominated public debate. …