Teachers’ union threatens GNWT with legal action

DWANE WILKIN

The union representing teachers in the Northwest Territories said it will take legal action to force government negotiators back to the bargaining table.

And the Northwest Territories Teachers’ Association (NWTTA) is seeking Ottawa’s help to do so.

After seeking an opinion from an Edmonton legal firm, union president Patricia Thomas said she has every confidence that a legal challenge to the GNWT’s amended Public Service Act will have the desired effect.

Just to be sure, the union announced Tuesday that it plans to ask the federal cabinet to use its powers to overturn the Act. Thomas also said the NWTTA intends to plead its case before the International Labour Organization and the U.S. office of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

“We’re considering all our options,” Thomas said. “We’re certainly committed to exhausting the legal route before examining the job-action route.”

Teachers rejected offer

The union and the Territorial government have been trying to reach a new contract settlement since last April, but remain wide apart on many clauses central to the government’s final offer tabled last November.

In an early December vote, 68 percent of NWTTA’s members rejected the government offer. In particular teachers oppose a proposed across-the-board salary rollback of 6.25 percent.

They are also upset with the government’s plan to scrap its generous vacation-travel assistance program for some 968 teachers living and working outside Yellowknife. Travel assistance has typically been worth thousands of dollars of year per teacher.

Thomas acknowledged the teachers’ position is somewhat weakened by the fact that the only other public-sector union in the North, the Union of Northern Workers, accepted the rollbacks.

However, added Thomas, “just because everybody’s doing it doesn’t make it right.”

While the union proceeds with its legal challenge, individual teachers may already be pondering more private acts of protest.

“I think what we’ll see is that some teachers will leave the North,” Iqaluit teacher John Maurice said this week. “They’ll leave because they just don’t see the rationale in living and working in an isolated and sometimes stressful situation, and not being rewarded or appreciated.”

Maurice, who for two years has been trying to generate interest in his fledgling Nunavut Teachers’ Association, thinks both the union and the government deserve failing grades for their efforts to resolve the dispute.

“We need a different kind of collective bargaining agent and a different kind of association,” said Maurice, who anticipates the creation of a new teachers’ union after Division in 1999.

“I think the new Nunavut government has to look at developing a different kind of relationship than the GNWT has had with the NWTTA.”

If yet another contract is imposed on teachers without reaching a collective agreement, Thomas indicated she, too, fears the demoralization may be too much for some NWTTA members to bear.

“Certainly some of our teachers have indicated that leaving is an option they’re considering,” Thomas said. “Any time we lose experienced people from the system the quality of education is going to suffer.”