Thursday, November 25, 2010

ECE union checkin

Was reminded of this by an Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario tweet late Wednesday, indicating the federation had just signed its 10th group of early childhood educators (ECEs).
The 10 boards are listed on ETFO's ECE website, where the news releases also provide an idea of who signed into ETFO and when.
Compare that to the Ontario Secondary School Teachers' Federation, which on its ECE site lists 17 school boards. Keep in mind OSSTF already represented some ECEs employed by school boards prior to the introduction of full-day kindergarten.
Surprisingly -- I've always expected it to be the dark horse in this race (if one can call it that) -- CUPE's Ontario website for the school sector lists only five news releases of boards that have signed letters of agreement for ECEs. I'm expecting CUPE would be the union representing the lion's share of ECEs employed within the 72 publicly funded school boards in Ontario. The announcements on the page are for signed letters of agreement (essentially extending the ECE PDT provisions on top of a similar contract already signed with that board, valid until the next round of contract negotiations).
As best as I can tell, the Ontario English Catholic Teachers' Association is not chasing ECEs. I don't know enough about the French-language federations to speak conclusively about them, however would note OSSTF has a good number of French-language boards where it's representing ECEs.
So is it possible only 32 boards have nailed down which union represents their ECEs? There have got to be more out there that I'm not finding. Given the sector's contracts expire on Aug. 31, 2012, people are slowly gearing up for whatever will happen in the next round.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Some are bogged down in arbitration.

Education Reporter said...

That doesn't surprise me, given many boards are running deficits with the program.

Munisa said...

Hi,

Do you happen to know which school boards in Ontario are unionized under CUPE?