A pair of teachers from Richmond Hill have taken stands against an advisory issued by their union, which has asked elementary school educators to stop volunteering their time to extracurricular activities.
Susan Beattie, a teacher who wrote an open letter to David Clegg, president of the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario (ETFO) York Region, was the first to publicly raise concerns about union pressures to withdraw voluntary activities such as extracurriculars and staff meetings.
This and a similar advisory from the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation were enacted to protest a two-year contract imposed on teachers by the Liberal provincial government. While the secondary school union’s advisory was since lifted, ETFO’s continues.
Beattie, who teaches Grade 1 at Walter Scott Public School, said in an interview that she agrees in principle with the union’s aims to achieve a new bargain. However, she emphasized that the union implemented an advisory, not an obligation.
She grew disillusioned by alleged pressure tactics to conform with the union position and stepped down from her four-and-a-half-year post as a union steward last fall, prior to a day of protest planned by teachers. She did not feel that she could get behind it, said Beattie.
“It is our choice, and we should be able to exercise that choice without feeling like a traitor to the union,” she said. “They will say that it is a choice, but [work action] is the only individual option given.”
Now, stewards are being told directly to either back the union or give up their positions, she claimed.
After the union’s March 1 deadline to decide if it would lift the job action had passed without the union stopping the action, the discouraged Beattie felt she had to take a stand.
She resumed her student choir.
She said her main objection is that ETFO purports a full consensus among its members to withdraw extracurriculars. Beattie claimed that never once had the teachers been polled about halting extracurriculars specifically.
And Beattie noted that she is clearly not alone.
While she was the first to stand up publicly, she had received e-mails from other teachers who shared her concerns. She noted it is hard for teachers to speak up lest the appear to oppose their union.
One letter came from George Thomas, a Richmond Hill teacher who teaches Grade 3/4 at Ashton Meadows Public School in the city of Markham. Thomas had been quietly coaching basketball at the school, as well as staying active in the voluntary activities he leads at the school, she said. He has since appeared on TVO’s The Agenda.
When ETFO was reached for comment, a staff member said interviews on the topic were being refused on the grounds that only two teachers are not in consensus with the union’s job action.
In an open letter published on the ETFO website, provincial union president Sam Hammond claimed that a “vast majority” of union members back the action, which would not end until collective bargaining rights are restored.
“The responsibility for the current situation rests squarely with the provincial government and only that government can implement the change that will restore peace and stability to our schools,” he wrote.
