BLeSage-CNO

Ottawa-Carleton ETFO Chief Negotiating Officer, Brian LeSage- views are my own

[BLeSage-CNO @OcetfoC]

Did you know that the biggest category of WSIB claims for @ocdsb teachers, our members, is VIOLENCE? 31% of claims, the highest portion of them, is from people who have been injured by violence in their workplaces. #onted is in crisis and this is another data point that demonstrates this clearly. It’s why @ETFOeducators are fighting at the bargaining table for a properly funded Public Education system. Will @fordnation or @PaulCalandra listen?

[BLeSage-CNO @OcetfoC]

News from the first day of Central Bargaining. @ocdsb teachers should go online to ETFO Member Records to ensure they have your personal email. Visit https://t.co/GESwko0VYK and register with your GEM email to login to our secure Local site. Stay informed, stay engaged. We need 83,000 of us in this fight.

[Elementary Educators @ETFOeducators]

Provincial #onted bargaining begins!

Take a listen to what the @ETFOpresident had to say after the first day of bargaining with reps from the *new* Council of Directors of Education (CODE) and the provincial government. #onpoli

[BLeSage-CNO @OcetfoC]

https://t.co/fhttlVlJls

A MUST read for @ETFOeducators and anyone who cares about #onted. The executive summary boils it down on p.4-9. A very large (5000+) study of Alberta teachers describing problems with their system. I would say the situation is as bad or worse in Ontario. We need fixes. Desperately. Canadian education systems are in crisis and the data is here to show it.

[Elementary Educators @ETFOeducators]

Media Advisory: Education unions hold press conference to provide update on collective bargaining: https://t.co/4pxayFrbZM #Onted

[BLeSage-CNO @OcetfoC]

@LFairclo @ETFOeducators You DO realize it cost the govt over $200mil in interest and repayments for that mistake, right? And that doesn’t include the legal fees it cost them to get a ruling that they were wrong.

[BLeSage-CNO @OcetfoC]

Dalton Mcguinty committed perhaps the most brazen, cynical, political weasel job I ever experienced. In the summer of 2011, he delivered a masterful speech to @ETFOeducators at our Annual Meeting. He gave what sounded like a sincere, full-throated defence of public education in #onted and collective bargaining and got a standing ovation. As soon as he got elected, he immediately turned around and within months passed the egregious Bill 115, snuffing out bargaining rights for teachers and which had to eventually be overturned after a long and costly legal battle. Dalton Mcguinty was NOT “a good one”.

[BLeSage-CNO @OcetfoC]

@FromTeachrsDesk Couldn’t agree more

[BLeSage-CNO @OcetfoC]

An education system in meltdown is largely not a creation of school boards in #onted, or wasteful Trustees, or Unions. A govt two levels up decided to welcome millions of people into the country. They largely didn’t fund the cost of providing frontline services for this influx. @fordnation decided to suck $6.5bil in real dollars out of schools. This is why we can’t serve students. Govts need to pay for the political decisions they make instead of making them, walking away, and then demonizing the institutions and people who are desperately trying to make things work- and in the case of @ETFOeducators and other educators, getting injured more and more often doing it.

[BLeSage-CNO @OcetfoC]

@Kapur_AK Amen, Doc. It’s the same in #onted

[BLeSage-CNO @OcetfoC]

@Teachers__Unite Educators need to show up in Union spaces, engage respectfully, make their priorities known, and vote.

[BLeSage-CNO @OcetfoC]

Want to see the cold hard reality of what $6.5bil in real cuts to education and $400mil in missing Spec Ed funding causes in #onted for @ETFOeducators?

It causes badly injured educators:

[BLeSage-CNO @OcetfoC]

https://t.co/heZMiWLgy4

So this is kind of what @ETFOeducators thought they were supposed to get out of the language in our 2022-2026 deal with @fordnation. Sitting down together to take a meaningful look at a new and improved Code of Conduct and to make it clear and impactful across #onted to try to stem the rising tide of violence and dysregulated behaviour. What happened was a disgraceful reneging where the Ford govt said we’re banning vaping and devices (again) and we’re done. This govt ignored commitments to Teachers and students made in bargaining to work with us to make schools safer so they could make an empty political statement about vapes and devices and do nothing. I hope things work out better for our colleagues in PEI. I know violence and the safety of Teachers will continue to be a top priority for Ontario Teachers in this coming round of bargaining.

[BLeSage-CNO @OcetfoC]

This chart screams out what the main problem is facing Boards like @OCDSB This isn’t caused by “mismanagement” by Trustees or by Senior Admin or by spending on mistaken priorities. This is $350mil in real dollars that aren’t there to run schools and serve students just in Ottawa because @fordnation made decisions to cut funding. Their supervisor wasn’t able to come here and fix this. He can’t. The problem is the funding is evaporating and it becomes something that builds on itself and gets worse. It’s happening around #onted and it has to change. @ETFOeducators @ClassSizeMatter @RedForEdFACTS

[BLeSage-CNO @OcetfoC]

When Principals respond to serious incidents of student misbehaviour such as mocking or threatening a teacher with “they’re children and that’s how we have to expect them to act”, something is seriously wrong. When “mitigating circumstances” becomes something that completely absolves students from any wrongdoing, again, something is seriously wrong. We promote what we permit. If a Principal is essentially telling me I have to sit there and take a kid swearing at me, hitting me, taunting me- it’s over. You’re no longer part of my solution, you’re part of my problem. #onted schools can’t become places run through coercion, punishment and fear, but the way we’re doing things now is clearly not working. Teachers feel powerless and afraid. I hear it every single day. Every day. Students feel frustrated and traumatized by what they witness. Students avoid school, Teachers break and require more leaves. We need fair, sensible progressive discipline in schools where Teachers feel supported and Students see reasonable, logical boundaries and feel safe. Until we get that, schools will continue to be dysfunctional. And of course, @fordnation and @PaulCalandra underspending Spec Ed by $400mil a year according to their own Auditor doesn’t help either.

[BLeSage-CNO @OcetfoC]

Patients don’t care what their doctors think about a foreign conflict, just like #onted students and parents largely don’t care about what teachers think about these things. Just leave my loved one in emerg or my kid in your classroom out of it. Everyone is free to support causes outside their work and Union spaces. When you insist on bringing them into these spaces, you inevitably reduce the trust that people have in you and your judgment. You also make it easy for people to whip up sentiment against your Union or profession. Doctors and Teachers have one place to go to support them in their jobs- their professional Unions. They have many well-funded options if they want to stand up for Gaza or support the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism for that matter. Go to those institutions or places if you want to push for those things and leave your professional Unions to speak to those things they actually have the authority to speak about. You maintain the trust and authority your Unions have in their fields, you stop alienating many of your colleagues, and you make it easier for all to feel respected and represented by their Unions when you stop trying to use them as platforms for your personal causes.

[BLeSage-CNO @OcetfoC]

@PaulCalandra says he’s “optimistic about his relationship with unions” the same week a badly underfunded @ocdsb is forced to chop these crucial @osstf positions and we hear they’re hiring a “strategic advisor” position for up to $176k? I can give the Minister “strategic advice” for free- fund education to the level it needs to be funded so we don’t have to keep cutting teaching and other positions in a system that is starving. Start by restoring the $6bil+ in real dollars that have been taken out of #onted on your watch.

[Evan Cooper- MSO D25 OSSTF TBU 2019-2027 @evcoopaloop]

Public education is worth defending ‼️
We will be organizing, mobilizing, and working with school communities across Ontario to protect opportunities for students and families. Recent cuts in #Ottawa are a threat to our community.
Please read 👇👇‼️ @OSSTFD25TBU @osstf

[BLeSage-CNO @OcetfoC]

Something to ponder, #onted:

Amount of money @PaulCalandra committed to his “teachers buying paper towels and Kleenexes for their classrooms” cards:

$66million

Amount of money @fordnation’s govt had to spend in penalties to break the contract with Brewer’s Retail so you can buy beer in grocery stores:

$225million

Think about that for a minute. He was willing to spend almost 4x more money breaking a contract to allow wider beer sales than he was to provide basic supplies for schools.

[BLeSage-CNO @OcetfoC]

I’m still scratching my head @PaulCalandra’s outburst this week. But I think it demonstrates #BIGDIFFERENCE and #REDFORED on 29 Apr had its intended impact. It got noticed, it was a powerful signal, and the ruthless politician masquerading as an Education Minister figured he needed to try to talk past and around @ETFOeducators and @OECTAProv and @osstf and @AEFO_ON_CA to try to weaken them. It won’t work. Teachers standing in solidarity won’t be broken.

[Paul Calandra @PaulCalandra]

Stop putting teachers in the middle.

Let them focus on students.