1970s
First Provincial
Collective Bargaining Agreement, 1973
- Saskatchewan Bulletin
The decade started with a flourish for the Federation with the formal opening of the new STF Building at the spring Council meeting. Gib Eamer returned to the fold to cut the ribbon on the auditorium named after him, and Emma Stewart presided over the opening of the Stewart Resources Centre.
The decade also opened with the Federation embroiled in a struggle to establish collective bargaining for teachers in the province, and a stern warning from the general secretary, Stirling McDowell, about the scope of the struggle: “I am not talking about salaries. I am talking instead about the destiny and the very existence of the teaching profession.” McDowell also told Council that it was time for teachers to turn to the public for support: “Education today is under heavy attack. Teachers cannot withstand it alone. We must ensure that the public understands the basic and pervasive value of what teachers are attempting to do.’’
It was the first time in Canada that a teachers’ group had requested provincial bargaining. Former STF president Larry Young remembers his term of office in 1971-72 as one long information and public education campaign: “It took a major part of the year to discuss this adequately with the teachers of Saskatchewan and to explain our point of view via radio and television to the Saskatchewan public.”
By January 1973, SSTA and STF negotiators were deadlocked in government-sponsored discussions of new legislation to replace the 1968 bill. The Trustees Association continued to press for the maintenance of compulsory area bargaining, and the Federation continued to reject it while pressing for its own program of bi-level collective bargaining. Education Minister Gordon McMurchy concluded that the government would have to break the deadlock and brought in a new bill, Bill 80, An Act Respecting the Negotiation of Collective Bargaining Agreements for Teachers in March. It was assented to May 2, 1973.
The new bill provided for bi-level bargaining as it is conducted today. At the provincial level the STF and a government-trustee committee negotiate what are the essential economic issues: salaries, principals’ and vice-principals’ allowances, superannuation, group life insurance and sick leave. At the local level the school board and the teachers employed by that board negotiate leaves, substitute teachers’ salaries, the length of the local agreement, method of payment, and special allowances.
At either level the negotiating parties may choose to include other issues in the scope of their bargaining, as long as all are agreed and as long as they are not issues reserved for consideration at the other level.
David Keith, president during 1972-73, saw the introduction of Bill 80 in the house. The second reading of the bill was going on during the Council meeting, held in Regina that year, and the legislative gallery was packed with teachers. Keith regarded the bill as a victory for the teachers: “There is no doubt that this was a milestone in Federation history. For the first time the Federation had the legal right to bargain on behalf of all teachers in the province and to contract with the government for their services.” However, he cautioned, “Legislative action bringing the Act into being was an accomplishment but it cannot be considered the total achievement of our objective. We have a long way to go before we have full collective bargaining rights.” (By the end of the decade and the beginning of the ‘80s teachers struggling to get noon-hour supervision on the agenda at local negotiations could only agree with him.)
Salary scales from one area to the next varied so much that the dilemma faced by the STF was choosing whether to try to put everyone on the same provincial scale all at once, or to try to phase it in over a number of years. Stirling McDowell describes the choice as comparable to “cutting off an arm all at once or an inch at a time.” The Federation decided to go for complete parity at once. The first province-wide scale was settled on in September 1973, and within three weeks negotiations were underway for 1974 and 1975.
The new legislation was indicative of a profound change that had been taking place in the entire educational system in Saskatchewan since before the Second World War. Stirling McDowell comments:
“I sometimes think of it as a 180 degree shift of ‘interna’ and ‘externa.’ That is, things dealing with money started out in the province as the almost exclusive preserve of local boards. In the beginning there wasn’t even the government grant. Then the great day came when we had a provincial grant of $200 to every school district. But essentially it was entirely the local people who had to raise the money, build the school, hire and pay the teacher, see that there was a stable for horses, and outhouses, and all the things that had to do with money.”
“On the other hand they had little or nothing to say about content. Courses of study, lists of textbooks, examinations, qualifications required of teachers and the like were decided entirely by the province.”
“So you see over 75 years a very substantial shift in those decisions to the point where the province had more and more to say about finance and less and less to say about program.”
The 1973 legislation has also changed relationships within the Federation. McDowell observes:
“When everything was bargained locally each local association was law unto itself, because although the Federation would advise and encourage and try to get common objectives generally accepted—and with some degree of success—when the chips were down the decision was local.”
Lionel Sproule feels that the change has also put more pressure on the president’s position. Sproule, who recalls that his first involvement with Federation work was as a member of a local bargaining committee at Long Lake, served his second term as president in 1982-83.
“When we went into one massive bargaining session the role of the president changed. Having the president bargain obviously has taken a lot of time, but it also means that that person is more directly responsible to each teacher in dollars and cents figures. It’s the president that teachers can come to and ask, ‘How come?’”
The focus on central office that developed in the mid-’70s was reflected in the growth of the Stewart Resources Centre, which evolved during that period into the only service to teachers of its kind in Canada. It is not just a professional collection, it is a generator and producer of teaching materials as well, including the latest in computer software for Saskatchewan schools. Saskatchewan teachers have always maintained their own central library, first at the old Alliance office, and then with the Federation. In 1974 the Federation also established the Teaching Materials Centre, and the following year Teaching Materials amalgamated with the Stewart Resources Centre. In 1975 the Mary Ellen Burgess Drama Library was passed on to the Stewart Resources Centre from the Department in Regina, where it was not getting a great deal of use, and was opened in the Federation by Burgess, the grande dame of Saskatchewan school drama. Stewart Resources Centre co-ordinator Jean Millar recalls that some of the visiting professionals at the opening indicated they believe it to be the only library of its kind in Canada and perhaps in North America.
In the meantime, local associations were finding their feet again after changes brought about by the introduction of bi-level bargaining. Gary Genge, assistant general secretary of the STF, recalls the hiatus in activity that developed in mid-decade and the change that took place in the late ‘70s.
“Around the late ‘60s and the beginning of the ‘70s there was quite a big interest in the local associations. Regional meetings dealt with the association organization, and it was popular to describe it as a miniature of the provincial organization, with professional development areas, bargaining, welfare, communications committees, and so on.”
A good deal of the motivation for local associations’ activities seemed to falter when salary negotiations shifted to the provincial arena. From the introduction of the legislation in 1973 until just before the end of the decade was, according to Genge, “an adjustment period when the focus went away from the local associations. It was also a period when there wasn’t any big provincial education thrust—no division system being contemplated or ‘continuous progress’ being studied.”
Genge ties the more recent change in emphasis to the study of the Federation launched in 1977. The study had been precipitated partly by a sense that the local associations were drifting away from contact with the central organization (or vice versa) and that roles needed re-examination. The study led in turn to a growing awareness of the real strengths of the locals and their importance in the strength of the organization. Genge recalls a revived interest in weekend regional leadership meetings, where new teachers are invited to take “STF 101”, and a renewed interest in staff members working with local association executives on how to do needs assessment activities, professional development and the like.
The resurgence of activity at the local level led directly to the tremendous response to the “quality of teachers’ work life” project, the results of which had been a major preoccupation of the ‘8Os.