39.5 Bill 160 and the Big Strike: "Reflections on the Revolution in Ontario: Ten Days that Shook the Province"
39.5.1 Introduction
This section is one installment in a large thematic thread on the subject of my experiences in the teachers' union movement that runs throughout the chronicle. Click here to see a table which summarizes these thematic threads.
39.5.2 Background to the 1977 Teachers' StrikeThe Ontario teachers' strike that began on Monday, 27 October 1997 involved five unions 126,000 teachers and affected 2.1 million students. This strike was North America's largest, right ahead of the 1975 New York City strike when 60,000 teachers walked off the job. My experiences in this strike are fully detailed in my account of the strike --see Bill 160. The strike is not a typical one, and some even felt it was not really even a labour issue. The painting at right, Bierstadt's painting of "Picket Duty" (1862) suggests another loftier association with the word "picket" -namely standing watch against the enemy. |
|
The strike was not about teachers fighting their employer over a contract. It was a strike protesting against the Harris government and Bill 160. Those of us on strike were standing watch against this enemy.
39.5.3 Bill 160The main issue of debate is over Bill 160, which is all about who holds The Power to set education policy in the province of Ontario. Bill 160 centralizes control of the education system, putting it in the hands of the provincial government. It eliminates the authority of school boards and teachers' unions to set classroom and teaching conditions locally through collective bargaining. The bill allows the government to regulate class sizes, education property tax rates, teachers' preparation time, the amount of time teachers and students spend in school and the use of non-certified instructors. The issue is whether teachers should have a role in educational reform. |
|
The most recent atrocity has been the passing of Bill 160 despite a two week province-wide teachers' strike, the largest teachers' strike in North America. The strike was a protest of how this bill 'restructures' education in a way that strips the power from school boards, giving it to the provincial government. It lengthens the school year for students and cuts down on the amount of preparation time for teachers. The cynicism of the government's position came through clearly in the way they relied on public ignorance in their publicity campaign. Bill 160, they told us, would make teachers spend more time in the classroom. We were supposed to interpret this to mean that our children would have more time with teachers and get better instruction. Of course, it was not difficult to see through the rhetoric and realize that it really meant that fewer teachers were going to do the same amount of teaching. Thus, it allowed the government to lay-off thousands of teachers. The government paid no attention to the high levels of popular support for the teachers, especially among the parents. Even the Globe and Mail admitted that the teachers "won the war over public opinion."
Yet, the Tories did not even extend the consultation process or make any real changes in the bill. Even after a leaked document made it very clear that they plan to save $667 million in the 1998-99 education budget, they continue to insist that the bill's intentions are to improve education and have little to do with saving money. Presumably, they assume that our memories are so short, we will forget this blatant disregard for public opinion by the next election. Or, more likely, they know that these actions are totally in keeping with the odd contradictions that have arisen with the neo-conservative agendas across North America. The present political climate enables them to be straight-faced as they use anti-democratic methods to force their morals-based picture of the world on everyone in the name of fiscal necessity.
The television commercials (paid for by our ever-so-precious tax dollars that are supposedly the rationale for much of this devastation) revealed to what extent the government assumed that the public was totally ill-informed. All the newspapers and media were highlighting that the rank-and-file members were holding strong and supported the strike. The leadership of the five teachers unions was more wary. They felt (to varying degrees) that after two weeks of having totally ignored the strike, it was unrealistic to think the Conservative government would budge from their entrenched position. This was why the union leadership called off the strike. But the government-sponsored ads were using the usual rhetoric of how those all powerful 'union bosses' are the only ones resisting such sensible legislation.
The teachers' strike was not, strictly speaking, a labour strike. The school boards, technically the teachers' employers, were on the teachers' side. The Tories wanted to label this an illegal strike and use the courts to force the teachers back to work. But the government could not get standing in the courts since none of the school boards would lead a court challenge. So the fact that according to the teachers' contracts they were not in a strike position, could not be used to force them back to work. It did mean that they could not get strike pay. So not only were the teachers supporting the strike, they were doing so while getting no pay whatsoever. They were not protesting as workers against their employers, but as outraged political actors fed up with the policies of the government.
Teachers in Ontario have not had a history of militancy by any stretch of the imagination. And this new political commitment was fostered by a series of 'General Strikes' or 'Days of Action' organized by labour and activist organizations that rotated in cities throughout Ontario in the previous year. I remember being at one of these strikes, being surrounded by banners of the OSSTF (Ontario Secondary School Teachers Federation) and they were singing 'Oh Canada.' What type of a protest song is 'Oh Canada'? But of course, these were teachers in the process of becoming political. Part of this process is not knowing what songs to sing. Of course, you have to pick a song that everyone knows the words to. And in lieu of songs sheets for the 'Internationale,' 'Oh Canada' would have to suffice. By the time of the teachers' strike, their commitment was truly inspiring and admirable. I didn't hear 'Oh Canada' from any of their picket lines this time around.
39.5.5 The Teachers' Strike in the Context of the Larger Union and Anti-Tory Movement
At this time, the Fall of 1997, many in the OFL were becoming fearful that the anti-Tory movement was taking too radical a direction and might escape the bureaucracy's control. Many unions demanded the OFL scale down the protests and shift its resources to returning the NDP to power at the next election, slated for 1999 or 2000.The strike was called with the overtly political aim of forcing the Tories to abandon plans to centralize power over education financing and policy in the hands of the Education Ministry, which would allow the Harris government to force through spending cuts and regressive curriculum changes, and gut teachers' working conditions.
The Tories fully expected the strike would collapse under the threat of legal reprisals and a media witch-hunt that charged the teachers with taking a million Ontario school children hostage. But while the strike undoubtedly did cause hardship to working parents, the public rallied behind the teachers, in recognition that theirs was a fight to defend public education. To the Tories' dismay, even government polls showed that a majority of Ontarians supported the strike. Picket lines and teacher demonstrations were swelled by students, parents and other workers.
The leaders of the five teachers' unions that comprise the Ontario Teachers' Federation (OTF) had called the strike -—which they tellingly termed a "protest," not a political strike —anticipating that the government would obtain a court injunction ordering the teachers back to work. This would have provided them with a pretext for ending the strike and cutting a deal with the government.
But the Tories' application for an injunction was denied. The Ontario Court judge hearing the case concluded that popular support for the strike was so high that state intervention against it might dangerously erode the authority of the courts. In effect, he placed the responsibility for ending the strike directly on the teachers' unions.
The OTF, with the full support and encouragement of the OFL, quickly complied. In the immediate aftermath of the rejection of the government's request for an injunction the leaders of the teacher unions offered the Tories sweeping concessions. When the government refused their offer, they declared nothing further could be done and ordered the teachers to return to work.
It was not any lack of support for the strike or any lack of militancy and solidarity on the part of the teachers that precipitated the union leaders' surrender. Just the opposite. It was the threat that the strike could spark a wider popular movement against the Harris government, which could break out of their grip and destabilize the entire national political situation, that frightened the union bureaucracy and caused them to torpedo the strike.
Within weeks of its betrayal of the teachers, the OFL elected as its new president the candidate of the wing of the bureaucracy that had opposed the Days of Action. Predictably, the anti-Tory campaign was officially buried the summer of 1998.
