Work-to-rule damages rural communities
Article content
Early one Friday afternoon last spring, I dropped in on an Amish friend and found several young ones in the house.
Classes at the school down the road had been dismissed at noon that day, but it was not a half-day off for the pupils. They were preparing to head back to join their teacher and other members of the community to give the school a good spring cleaning.
The young ones were excited by the prospect. It's unknown if the teacher was similarly enthused by the idea of directing a rambunctious young crew all afternoon, but it's likely she would be pleased with the results.
The contrasts to how things work in the rest of society are stark on many levels, not least of which is the role of the teacher.
In public elementary schools throughout Ontario, teachers are working to rule to drag the government back to the bargaining table to negotiate working conditions.
Whether or not the work-to-rule will win the teachers' union points in bargaining is anybody's guess, but on the public relations front the union is not faring too well in some rural communities.
It's not that the people don't support their local teachers. They do. But the union's tactic is impacting aspects of community life beyond the usual negatives for pupils and parents.
Let's take the Sydenham Fall Fair for example. The fair, which describes itself as "perhaps the last remaining school-based fall fair in Canada," gives more than 500 pupils a chance to show off their talents in a wide range of agricultural activities.
Some children have raised farm animals to show at the fair while others have made crafts or baked goods and still others will show off their fruits and vegetables in garden club displays.
Since its first appearance in 1853 (the school got involved in 1941), the fair has moved around a few times. Beginning in 2008 the modern fair found a home at Grey Roots Museum and Archives near Owen Sound.
With its pioneer village, barn and general agricultural ambience, the museum was the ideal home for this event.
Not this year, however. The union's work-to-rule position is forcing the fair to move to Sydenham Central elementary school, a school in an urban setting.
At another fall fair, a long-standing tradition of having teachers march their pupils to the local fall fair also was lost because of the job action.
Julie Stanley, president of the Bluewater branch of the teachers' union, said she wasn't aware of any other instances in which communities would be impacted like this. In fact, she said, in the earlier days of the work-to-rule, pupils wouldn't even know a job action was taking place.
It takes a lot of backbone for a government to stand up to a teachers' union because of the motherhood and apple pie nature of schooling.
In this instance, however, the government must shoulder most of the responsibility because of the way it has folded during every confrontation with teachers during the past decade of Liberal rule.
There seems to be no understanding in the ivory towers of Queen's Park that labour peace purchased by giving away the farm at every turn is never lasting labour peace. Such an approach will only come back to bite you on the butt.
In this case, the butt bites are being spread to other folks who don't even have a heifer in this show ring.
Union news releases tell us that there is wide support for the work-to-rule position among its 76,000 members. In the rest of rural Ontario, maybe not so much.
jmerriam@bmts.com