This Bill will pass.

What’s not passing mustard in Ontario is the teacher union’s usual claim to some sort of moral high ground.

When the Toronto Star backlashes the unions you have to know that they’re losing the PR war on this one.

Good for McGuinty/Hudak….not so much for Horwath’s NDP….I wouldn’t place too much stock on the results of the K/W results either.

Interesting also is that we’ve heard little from the usual person for education as public sentiment for the unions she supports go in to free fall. Odd that?

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/politics/article/1255834—cohn-the-moral-high-ground-that-ontario-teachers-unions-claim-to-occupy-is-slipping-away

The comments are revealing.

“‘m not a teacher… just a grandfather !
Interesting POV by the Star’s Queen’s Park reporter, Martin Regg Cohn.
I don’t agree with him.
Our government’s negotiated past contracts with teachers and all public sector workers. Now when cash flow is thin, they want to take it out on the public sector. It’s not about volunteering… it’s about negotiating in good faith. You don’t send in your lawyers to the first meeting. Wrong tone !”

Imagine that, parents are chastise when they do bring in their lawyers, education consultants, and others that know how to read the riot act to education officials that refuses to negotiate in a fair and transparent manner.

“I’m losing my morals?
Cherican I completely agree with your comments. When did it become my responsibility to provide all extra curriculars for children. I do it because I enjoy it. If I polled 100 private sector workers on how many of them have gone to their local school to volunteer to run a program for students I would guess that 99-100 percent would say they don’t. Time to get involved non-teachers.”

The responses has been interesting, where the usual theme, has been on banning teachers’ children of activities that take place in the private sector. Funny though, one thing that I do know, parent volunteers in schools - most parents don’t meet the criteria. Just in case the students are exposed to non-approved material and knowledge. And the schools do not want parents to asked nosy questions, questioning the ways and operations of a school.

The moral high ground is slipping away, judging from the comments.

And the federal bill will pass, without much fuss from all political parties.

I guess we just keep looping around.  We’ve already gone over this material before.  Here is a link to information on political campaign contributions in Canada and the provinces:  http://votetoronto.ca/en/1/1/219/Funding-Ontario-Political-Parties—2004-to-2011—Follow-the-Money.htm

An interesting quote from the report:

“Between 2004 and August 31 2011, unions gave the three Ontario political parties slightly more than $9,275,000. While that is a significant amount even spread out over seven and a half years and over three parties, it is just 14 percent of the amount that corporations gave almost entirely to the Liberal and Conservative parties.”

You people keep going on about the ‘unfair amount of political clout’ the unions have compared to those poor corporations.  I think its time to get over this and move on since unions only contribute about one tenth of the amount given by corporations.  By this measure, you should be 10x as angry at those poor corporations.  Why don’t you start writing 10x the articles on corporate contributions?

Now that I have some time, I’ll tackle your second point about compensation for union leaders.  Have you ever stopped to think what corporate CEO’s are paid?  Here is a list of the top earning corporate leaders in Canada:  http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/careers/management/executive-compensation/executive-compensation-rankings-for-canadas-top-earners/article4243534/

To compare, I won’t even start at the top of the list, I’ll start with #25, Louis Vachon of the National Bank of Canada.  He pulled in $8,469,286 in total earnings.  He is the head of an organization of 20,183 employees (http://www.bnc.ca/bnc/files/bncpdf/en/2/En Bref an_31_07_2012.pdf)

If you divide his pay by the number of employees, it means that Mr. Vachon is paid $419.62 per employee. 

Now, let’s extrapolate for Ken Coran, the ‘fat cat union boss’ of OSSTF.  The OSSTF employs over 60,000 educational workers (http://www.osstf.on.ca/about).  If Mr. Coran were paid at the same rate as Mr. Vachon, then he would be making $25,177,200.  Care to wager that his real compensation is only a fraction of that?

Funny how the far right (Tea Party) never talks about executive compensation.  Especially considering that it was the ‘corporate welfare bums’  (coined by David Lewis) that got us into this financial mess and recession in the first place.  It’s a neat trick of propaganda to take your own failings, project them onto the opposition, and deflect the heat from yourself ... and you fell for it.

Hmmm….

  How much paid release time, as in Waterloo, and financial support, as in “Working Families”  was doled out?

Funnelling money through our version of political action committees is certainly contributing to/against parties.

Then there’s direct advertising, via, the unions, against particular parties.

The difference is that I don’t HAVE to bank at the National Bank. I’m not forced to buy their stock either.  Customers and investors have a choice. 

If M. Vachon’s efforts fail, then the willing shareholders can vote to can him. 
Also, the OTPF exec’s are similarly compensated (See pages 74-77) http://docs.otpp.com/annual_report/PDF2012/AnnualReport2011.pdf

BTW, the fund owns major shares in some of our largest banks and has just particpated in a huge joint venture with National Bank et al. through their investment, the Maple Group which just bought TMX.
http://www.torys.com/OurExpertise/TransactionsandCases/Pages/MapleAcquisitionGroupcompletesofferforTMXGroup.aspx 

In addition, National Bank, along with other Candian banks, faces very strict reporting and scrutiny under security and banking regulations.

http://www.canadiansecuritieslaw.com/2012/07/articles/securities-distribution-tradin/osc-approves-maple-acquisition-of-tmx/

Doretta,

A couple of issues raised in your response:

a)  As I said, we have been here before.  Too bad that you raise the choice flag again.  It is a specious argument.  With only about half a dozen chartered banks in Canada, you have more choice in the Canadian education system than in the Canadian Banking system.  Heck, with the way things have been going around here lately, why don’t you ‘home school’ your money and put it under your mattress?

Furthermore, it was not the Canadian Education system that brought about the recession - you can blame that on the American Banking system.  However, in this forum, and other right wing organizations, the public sector is made to be the scapegoat - real nice.

Finally, I chose the National Bank not by intent, but simply because it was #25 on the list.  I could have chosen big oil - do you realize that there are only two refineries in Canada?  I could have chosen chip makers - Intel and AMD.  ... and so on If you think that you have any real choice in large corporations, you are truly fooling only yourself.

2)  You did a nice trick of obfuscating facts.  OTPP is the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan - it is not our union.  Go look it up if you don’t believe me.  The pension plan is arguably the most successful investor group in the world.  Yes, the senior officials are extremely well-paid.  However, they are paid as a percentage of the profit they make for the fund, not as salary taken out of the pension money coming in.  In other words, it is a ‘value added’ pay system.  Very entrepreneurial, you should be happy.

3)  I don’t have any particular ax to grind against the National Bank.  Why are people on this site so quick to think that using something as an example automatically implies criticism?  They were simply #25 on the list.  I’m happy that my pension fund has invested in that fine institution.  I was simply drawing a comparison between pay rates - did you not understand that?

4)  Education not regulated?  Are you kidding me?  Chartered Banks in Canada are regulated by the Bank Act.  Credit Unions are regulated under the CUCP Act.  The Education system ... ever heard of the Education Act?  Furthermore, we are specifically regulated under the Labour Relations Act and several others.

Really Doretta, I expected better of you.

Doretta makes a good point.

I heard Fred Hahn, the CUPE fellow comment repeatedly how much money the banks are earning.  Is he proposing, then, that members of the Ontario Teacher Pension Plan, other pension plans and hundreds of thousands of individual Canadians should be slapped to fund his crew?

The irony of hitting pension plans, often public service pension plans, with lower returns so as to fund public employees makes for an interesting argument, no?

It seems every time certain of the “union leaders try to make a case there’s an element of “Have you really thought this through?

I suspect part of the problem is that a large part of their time is spent hanging around likeminded folks who’ve already bought in so there’s not much need to make a good case.

Wayne, you are missing my point entirely.
It’s not about schools, but about unions and their accountabilty & transparency.

a.  I disagree with this. We have a choice to invest in a business or not.  A teacher in a public school does not have a choice whether to belong to a union and have dues deducted and use for lord knows what purpose—unless they teach in an Alberta public charter school.  The rest of your recession comment is irrelevant to the argument. I didn’t cause the recesson either, but we all suffer (or benefit) from the ups and downs of the economy.

2.  The point on the Pension fund was to reflect your comment on executive compensation—the one YOU made in the first place.

3, Yes I did understand. See 2.

4.  Malkin’s post was reporting on the bill that will require UNIONS to be more transparent—not the education system.  The education system, while regulated, is not all that transparent in its reporting, (hence the need for more tools like http://www.SunshineOnSchools.ca). 
Publicly traded firms must constantly report on just about everything they do in Canada, unlike the US.  Check out any public company’s SEDAR reports.

and finally, I always try my best.

I find it rather amusing that public sector unions, and not necessarily the teachers’ unions, would find it so shocking that a government used their legislative arm. to send the public sector unions back to work Public sector unions, ought to take a look at their counterparts, the private sector unions. Ergo, it should not be surprising the public sector unions are undergoing a sea-sized shift, because governments have had a lot of practice in the past dealing with private unions. Try scab labour, being locked out, or on strike for more than a year in the 21st century. Not an easy feat in the 21st century and a scary prospect for private unions .

Disclosure, should actually be a law since unions, private or pubic are disinclined to disclose and inform their members, in a open and transparent fashion. From my experience, of the volunteering kind on a committee of a sporting organization, the parents who pay the freight charges, are always appreciative, knowing where and how their money is being spent.

Perhaps, an old fashioned idea for the 21st century, but watching and reading the arguments for Bill C-377, I am afraid the Bill will passed without much fuss. The NP article, stating one side, but there is another side that is rarely talk about, and that is more members of an union, might actively get more involved with their unions, bringing in fresh thinking and ideas. Bill C-377 might be just the ticket to packed union meetings to the rafters, because they are now informed members.

Informing and empowering people, are important factors. Both elements are missing in the public sector unions and more so inside the public sector unions. It is hard for me to understand why the students are chained to the teachers’ unions, and the parents are the balls of the chains. It is not just the teachers’ unions, the students and parents are chained to other parts of education system and government. What an awful way to treat the customers (the users) of the public education system.

Yesterday, I read a paper for the case of the customer - the student. To me, it sets out a good case, and why the teachers’ unions in Ontario are in a position they are today.

” If teachers and administrators continue to argue that “there is no customer” for K-12 public education, they may find that what they say becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy and one day there will be no students in their classrooms…......  Let us hope that day never arrives, but we are heading in that direction through no fault of the parents, through no fault of the students and through no fault of the employers who want to hire well trained students.  We are heading in that direction because the K-12 public education system refuses to recognize who their customer is and refuses to treat their customers the way suppliers need to treat their customers if they want to keep them as customers.”
http://leadershipforeducators.org/wordpress/2012/04/who-is-the-customer-for-k-12-public-education/

On that note, I have a question. How many choices of the customers (the students) have been traded and negotiated away, in exchange for a favourable contract and a satisfactory conclusion?

Wayne, what really bugs me about the public education system, how heavily regulated students and parents are, and more so for the parents and students who have no other place to go to, but the public education system.As a parent Wayne, you might have an inkling, how frustrating it is living in an area where there is no private tutoring and education concerns. I came up with a bright idea, of wanting to hiring a local teacher for $35.00 a hour, twice a week, who was trained in the Orton-Gillingham method. Teachers who worked in the public education system full timed, are not allow to tutor students on the side. Did the union or the government trade it away, for a favourable agreement? I never did get a straight answer from either party,

Teachers can go to work at night, at the local grocery store, but they cannot tutor students privately? What an awful way to treat the customers - the students. I can think of many more restrictions placed on students or teachers, that have been traded off in contract negotiations.

My point is, the union talking points ring hollowed to the customer base - the students and by extension the parents, especially when they have been so ill-treated by all the stakeholders within the public education system and the sitting governments of all political stripes.

Like the paper stated:

“The timing is critical for the K-12 public education system to begin to understand that a new partnership between the supplier (teachers, administrators and public funding sources) and the customer must be formed.  New forms of real feedback must be established with formal student evaluations of teachers, formal systems where students have real input into how they are treated, how they are educated and how they are viewed., ”

Doretta’s not missing the point at all that I can tell. The only point being missed is by the teacher unions and the poor teachers tethered forced in to a hugely unpopular fight that’s going to end up being the worst PR exercise EVER by the unions NOT the system.  This is all the unions.

Great for those teachers not being bullied by the union marching orders to withdraw extra-curriculars. You remember those right? Those things that when Mike Harris was Premier teachers wanted included as part of their job descriptions - volunteer or not (mostly not because teachers are compensated for their time).

Hmmm…

  It strikes me one issue is when teachers move from “paid” time to “unpaid” time.

A normal workday of, say, 8-4 would oblige teachers to be at school until well after the end of the schoolday at 3:15.  Does that mean they’re now “volunteering” their time for 45 minutes?

Then we have to remember that the school year is only about 195 days so, realistically, teachers should be obliged to work more than 8 hours per day, say, 8-5.  Now we’re really cooking!  They could “volunteer” upwards of 2 hours per day and still only be putting in about the same number of workhours as any other workers.

I’d wager the relatively short “classroom day” is premised on the expectation that teachers will do the various “volunteer” things they claim go above and beyond and are freebies on their part.

Maybe we should just treat them as other workers; punch in at 8, punch out at 6 and while you’re here we’ll assign you your jobs.

Imagine the howling, folks!!

looks like students in my local school will be demonstrating against McGuinty’s Bill on Monday morning. 

I wonder if they’ll be able to use the time towards their community service hours?

I suspect very few students would be inclined to not support the teachers in this bickerfest. 

Imagine the potential for minor blowback if one didn’t support the teachers in one’s school!