Reporting Contract Violations

We have a number of issues which are perennial contract violations, such as having your prep period taken away or being assigned extra duty.  I've created an online form that lets you easily report these violations to contribute to a data set that will allow us to press for the Board to stop Principals and other staff from violating our contract every single day.

The tool is simple, and can be easily used with a mobile browser.  Simply go to:


http://bit.ly/niagaraot
  • Select the school from a drop-down list.
  • Check one or more checkboxes to indicate the problem you encountered.
  • Select the date from a pop-up calendar.
  • Optionally enter your e-mail address.  While you're welcome to be anonymous, non-anonymous data has more credibility and allows me to contact you if I need further details.

Don't worry, your e-mail is confidential and for the union's use.  By no means will we be going into meetings saying "Mr. Chalk reported to us that you took away his prep."  What I'll be doing is periodically providing the Board with a list of schools and what's happening at those schools, and seeing if the Board is effective at addressing the issues I bring to them.  If they're not, then I'll have a good amount of data with which to try to assess the impact of things like lost preps (how many days of work are reassigned preps costing us, for instance?) with which I can put together policy grievances.

All that being said, we already have the tool we need to stop our contract from being violated: all you have to do is say No.

If all of us are consistent in saying "I'm sorry, but that would violate my collective agreement." when asked to do things like give up our preps, then the problem will disappear.  If anyone presses you on the issue, tell them to contact your Union President.  Then report to me that you were brave enough to say No, as well as what if anything was said in response.

This tool allows for easier aggregation of data for me; of course, always feel free to call or send an e-mail to president@niagaraot.org