Union-Management eSchool Negotiation

Background Information

eSchool District

eSchool is a school district in a relatively settled and stable upper-middle-income community with a strong interest in quality education. The eSchool District consists of ten schools: seven elementary schools (from Kindergarten to Grade 7) and three high schools (from Grade 8 to Grade 12).

There are 12,000 students in the eSchool District: 7,500 elementary and 4,500 high school students. The average class size in the elementary schools is 29. The high school classes are on average 10 students larger than the elementary schools.

The District is funded from three sources: (1) municipal property taxes, (2) provincial (state) government funding, and (3) federal government funding.

Over the last three years student enrolment in the eSchool District has continually fallen below the previous year’s enrolment. The decreased enrolments have reduced the government funding to the school district, which is allocated on a per student basis. In addition the projected property tax revenue for the current year has fallen short of the previous year. The community has twice defeated referenda to increase property taxes to fund education. Maintaining the District budget at a level consistent with the previous year will produce a budget shortfall of over $800,000. All this has led to a financial crisis in the eSchool District.

The management of the school district has lobbied both the provincial and federal governments for increased budgetary allocations with no result. Without the increased funding, the management contends that the school system will not be able to function effectively to the end of the current fiscal year. The only solution is to let some teachers go and increase the workload of the remaining teachers.

The teachers’ union represents 90 percent of all teachers in the district and consists of 260 elementary teachers and 115 high school teachers. The teachers’ workday is seven and a half hours long and the teachers are given one 50-minute period per day to prepare for their classes.

The contract between the eSchool District Management and the eSchool Teachers' Union expired on June 30, at the end of the previous school year. Since then, Management and Union representatives have met on several occasions in an attempt to finalize the new contract but they have not been successful.

There had been talks among the Union membership of the possibility of calling a strike if the contract was not finalized by the beginning of the school year. Parents have been placing pressure on both teachers and Management to keep schools operating. It is clear that there would be many upset people in the community if the education of their children is disrupted by a school closure or other job action. The Union executive has therefore agreed that even though there is no signed contract, for the benefit of the students and the community at large, the teachers would continue normal operations as the talks continue. This service commitment, however, continues to be reviewed on a daily basis.

Many issues have been resolved to date but 7 critical ones are still outstanding. A critical issue is that the Union is asking for a wage increase in line with recent gains achieved by unions in neighbouring communities. Despite pressure from community groups, the Union is justifying its wage demands by stating that the teachers are overworked and the cost of living in the local area has increased 3% in the past year. The Management is very concerned about being fiscally responsible and feels the need to cut its costs wherever it can. According to the Union, the Management has simply passed its fiscal problems onto the teachers and has not spent sufficient time confronting the community over its unwillingness to accept increased taxation to fund education.

Framework for Agreement

The following is the Framework for Agreement for the remaining seven issues. This framework was developed by the union and management teams during earlier meetings in which they were discussing and negotiating all of their issues. The extreme values for each issue represent the different opening positions for each side. The union and the management teams now need to come to an agreement on these issues as a complete package.