Update: Phase 3 Work to Rule protocols (PDF)
Phase 2 Work to Rule protocols (PDF)
Phase 2 Work to Rule FAQ (PDF)
More Phase 2 FAQs August 27, 2015 (PDF)
Phase 2 Work to Rule (which includes all the previous work to rule items) begins on the first day of school if a provincial agreement with ETFO has not yet been reached.
Note that OSSTF and OECTA have recently reached tentative agreements (details of which are confidential until ratified by their members). While technically these deals are separate from ETFO, they will likely set a pattern that the province will wish to follow when dealing with ETFO. Provincially we return to bargaining on September 1st, so it's possible that we'll have a provincial deal before school starts.
That being said, that still leaves us with Local bargaining. Locally, the DSBN has so far basically only agreed to amend the address of ETFO's head office in Toronto. Once a provincial agreement is in place, though, we'll all have a clear picture of what is and isn't addressed at the provincial level and be able to get down to more meaningful discussions. We won't have a complete collective agreement until both the provincial and local agreements are finished and ratified by the members.
A Provincial agreement should take care of some of the "big" items, but there will likely be items that didn't get covered that we may need to try to get some language for locally. At the Local level, our items tend to be more nitty-gritty amendments to address issues that affect how effectively the union can represent you or which currently present loopholes to what we feel the intent of the original language was. For instance (this is a non-exhaustive list):
- Ensuring union representation during discipline procedures, and better ways of dealing with allegations.
- Access to information.
- Offence declaration procedures more in line with those for other employees.
- A meaningful cap to the OT Roster. Our current 646 person cap is the number we stopped the Board at through arbitration; it by no means represents a negotiated number that reflects any conscious thought or calculation of a number that would help everyone receive a decent amount of work while still ensuring there are no unfilled jobs.
- Job callout and cancellation procedures. There are currently no rules surrounding these items.
- Immediate placement on grid pay when placed in an LTO through interview (as opposed to a daily job that morphs into an LTO after 10 days).
- Benefits in an LTO after 40 days if it wasn't known in advance it would be at least 40 days (this is an unaddressed item that currently allows many LTOs to be denied access to benefits).
Technically at the Local level we can reach impasse, file for conciliation, and reach a legal strike position just as we have at the Provincial level. If DSBN seeks to simply maintain the status quo on everything not addressed in a provincial agreement, it may be necessary to apply some pressure to see some movement on longstanding issues. We'll cross that bridge if we come to it, though.
