Day: April 18, 2019

The path

by dougpete, posted in Education

There’s nothing that gets to a teacher’s ire quicker than to say something along the lines of “must be nice to have the summer off”.

Premier Ford on teachers: “I think it’s a pretty good deal that they have right now. They get their three month holidays, they have the best benefit package in the entire country, best pension in the entire country. They have a great gig” #onpoli pic.twitter.com/CtibBup9eS— Richard Southern (@richard680news) April 16, 2019

Hands up if you’ve had that thrown at you.

Sadly, that comment has been attributed to the Premier in this article.

Ford tells teachers not to ‘pull this strike nonsense’ as contract talks near

As you can imagine, the comments weren’t taken passively and social media has been quick to respond.

Of course, negotiations have yet to start between teachers and the government.

In any set of negotiations, there are tools that both sides have to use to help reach a settlement.

Right now, both sides have been using the various media availabilities to state positions. These positions are emotional and exist only to strengthen the relationships among the two sides and to strengthen the opinions towards the other side. It’s important to remember that these are not negotiating points. Teachers and government aren’t going to be convinced of the other side’s position as a result. But they make for good news headlines.

Both the government and the teachers have vested interests in keeping schools open. There is a process as described on the Ministry of Labour’s website.

I can’t believe that there would be anyone who would look forward to the ultimate tool that either side could use. I believe that there is an interest on all parties to come to a solution that would be acceptable by all.

It’s just that the path to getting there isn’t going to be pleasant.

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OTR Links 04/18/2019

by dougpete, posted in Links

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.