Nunavik teachers approve new collective agreement

Nunavik teachers said yes to a new collective agreement March 30, moving their union one step closer to signing new collective agreement in 2011.

Kativik School Board teachers voted 74 per cent in favour of the agreement, which was reached late February.

Seventy-five per cent of teachers participated in the vote this past week.

But the agreement is only a “tentative” deal, said Patrick D’Astous, president of the Association of Employees of Northern Quebec, who represents about 400 teachers in Nunavik.

“A tentative agreement isn’t a closed agreement,” D’Astous said. “Now we have to go though the text… and we have to be careful because changing a single word could change the meaning of an entire clause.”

The agreement provides for the creation of a special education policy for students with special needs — a key sticking point in negotiations — as well as an opening to allow for an adapted school calendar in Nunavik.

“The biggest winners in this are the students of Nunavik, particularly through the support students at risk will receive from this agreement,” D’Astous said.

Talks between the union and the KSB negotiating committee broke down in early February after teachers overwhelmingly rejected the school board’s previous offer.

When the AENQ threatened a series of strike days, the two sides agreed to return to the table Feb. 22. They reached a tentative deal just two days later.

This latest vote means the union will once again suspend its pressure tactics, which included an unlimited strike for September 2011.

The union’s right to strike continues until the collective agreement is signed. This signing could take place sometime in June, D’Astous said.

Negotiations with KSB’s negotiating committee focused on the non-wage provisions of the collective agreement. That’s because the terms of salary are settled between a provincial teachers union and the Quebec treasury board.

The teachers’ union says it still has a few more issues to resolve with the school board, including how teachers’ cargo benefits will be impacted under the new Nutrition North program as well as changes to the taxable housing benefit.

Highlights of the agreement include:

• a special education policy with a clear evaluation process and intervention plan, which can be grieved;

• letter of intention from the KSB which aims to increase the special education evaluation capacity to at least 300 students/year;

• maintaining the maximum number of students in a secondary level class at 19;

• an opening in the collective agreement to allow for an adapted school calendar;

• a letter of intention that the KSB will apply a solution to the food transport problem at a later date, following talks with Quebec’s treasury board [currently,

• teachers must use 50 per cent of their food transport allowance with Canada Post, a policy that be impacted by the implementation of Nutrition North in April 2011];

• teachers will only be responsible of the normal maintenance of a dwelling [like in South], the rest being KSB’s responsibility;

• a guarantee that the number of dependants will be the first criteria for allocation of housing until 2015;

• adult education teachers receive two trips south per year instead of one; and,

• the snowmobile/all-terrain vehicle shipment allowance will be extended to 15 months, so teachers can wait to purchase a vehicle in their second year.