Teachers picket school board at BMLSS

PROTEST. Teachers protested outside Bracebridge and Muskoka Lakes Secondary School on Tuesday during a school board meeting that was video cast to the school. Submitted photo

MUSKOKA - Teachers gathered outside the Bracebridge high school on Feb. 26 to protest the long labour board hearing on extracurricular activities.
About 100 people, including supporters from the Simcoe area, joined to protest outside the Bracebridge and Muskoka Lakes Secondary School in Bracebridge just before a school board meeting was video-cast to the school on Tuesday evening.
Elementary teachers in the Trillium Lakelands District School Board have been waiting for the outcome of a hearing by the Ontario Labour Relations Board to determine whether the elementary teachers union unlawfully counselled strike activity by telling its teachers to withdraw from extracurricular activities.
Steve Colliver, president for the Trillium Lakeland Elementary Teachers Federation (ETFO) of Ontario, said the protest was an information picket to show their displeasure.
“The protest was essentially to let our employer know that despite the fact that they think they’re doing it for teachers, they’re doing it to teachers. Two boards in the entire province are deciding to go to the labour board, the rest of the boards in the province seem to be interested in building bridges with their teachers,” Colliver said.
Karen Round, trustee for the Trillium Lakelands District School Board, said the board is not taking its teachers to task, but the union leaders.
“Their representatives are being overly aggressive. They’ve threatened, bullied, and intimidated teachers and it just has to stop,” she said.
The school board is telling the union leaders to “cease and desist the promotion of unlawful strike activity with our employees,” she said.
At the beginning of January the ETFO told its members to withdraw from participating in extracurricular activities outside the 300 minute instructional day. In the same motion, the ETFO said “That the non-participation of ETFO members in voluntary/extra-curricular activities be reviewed prior to March 1, 2013.”
Colliver said a meeting is planned for the end of February, though he could not say what was going to be discussed.
“There is a provincial executive meeting, and I have it on very good authority that I will be on a teleconference with other presidents (Thursday afternoon),” Colliver said.
About 230 protestors also gathered at the head office in Lindsay as well as 40 people in Minden.
“We were quite loud and vocal in Lindsay, so much so that our attendees that went into the meeting in Bracebridge said they could hear us there,” Colliver said.
The union president from the Toronto area as well as supporters from Durham, and Kawartha Pine Ridge attended the protest in Lindsay.
“We had OSSTF (Ontario Secondary School Teachers Federation) members with us as well,” Colliver said, noting his appreciation.
On Friday, Feb. 22, the OSSTF told high school teachers they could go back to participating in extracurricular activities which they had refrained from participating in since Dec. 10 in protest of Bill 115.
“It’s annoying from our perspective that the board will spend $100-$200,000 on an OLRB application and not bother mentioning secondary schools at all,” Colliver said prior to the protest.
“There’s no kids going to university on a basketball scholarship from Grade 7.”
Round questions whether the OSSTF was also engaged in unlawful strike activity, but said they have not received anything from the OSSTF telling teachers not to participate in extracurricular activities.
“We have 41 elementary schools that were impacted by the pressure placed on them by their union to proceed with unlawful strike activity,” she said. “Their Jan. 14 take-over bulletin outlined exactly what staff were not to participate in and we moved on that basis. We have not received any type of literature from the OSSTF outlining what we believe to be unlawful strike activity.”
Trillium Lakelands along with the Upper Canada School Board took the union to the Ontario Labour Relations Board in January. Round is looking forward to a decision on the matter.
“There is no cost, there is no value … that we can place on what these kids have lost this year and we can’t see it going on without clarity, we just can’t,” she said.

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