Nunavut teachers reject GN wage offer

The union representing Nunavut’s teachers has walked away from the bargaining table after the government offered a four-year contract with no salary increases.

Nunavut Teachers’ Association president Robin Langill said the government of Nunavut’s proposed wage freeze would leave Nunavut teachers falling further behind their Northwest Territories colleagues even though the teachers were under the same contract only 10 years ago.

That will make it difficult for school boards to recruit new teachers and keep experienced ones, he argued.

“Where would you choose if you were looking up north to work?” Langill asked rhetorically. “We will be the lowest paid teachers in the North by the end of this period that the government is suggesting [June 30 2013].”

One teacher who declined to be identified called the GN’s offer “bullshit.”

“I can’t believe how terrible this GN is! I’ve talked with a bunch of teacher friends who are getting rather fired up. A zero per cent increase over 4 years? We’re already 11 per cent behind the NWT,” the teacher said.

Langill said the most shocking part of the GN’s offer was the rollback to the Inuit Language Allowance, the annual bonus to salaries of teachers fluent in Inuktitut or Inuinnaqtun.

Under the existing collective agreements teachers earn up to an extra $5,000 a year depending on their level of fluency in an Inuit language.

That contract expired June 30, 2009.

Langill said the language in the government’s proposed offer is significantly different, and only covers teachers whose courses require them to teach bilingually.

That will eliminate the bonus for unilingual Inuktitut-speakers and bilingual teachers whose classes are only in one language, he explained, of whom almost all are Inuit.

“Our Inuit members are often called upon to use both of those languages outside of the classroom in helping unilingual members whether they are unilingual Inuktitut members or unilingual English- or French-speaking members,” Langill said.

Out of roughly 740 teachers in Nunavut, about 225 collect Inuit Language Allowance, costing the government $880,000 a year.

A minor benefit the government has also proposed changing concerns snow days.

Since 1990, the government and teachers have had a verbal agreement that teachers don’t need to go to work if students stay home due to heavy snow conditions.

But under the government’s proposal, teachers would have to go to the school if other GN offices are open, even if students are allowed to stay home.

It’s rolling back that kind of minor benefit that shows how little the government values its teachers despite officials’ words to the contrary, Langill said.

“The employer, through its government representatives going from the minister of education down to the assistant deputy minister have taken every opportunity they can over the past year to talk about how much they value teachers,” he said.

“It’s been very frustrating four us over this past year because we really don’t feel that they are demonstrating how they value teachers.”

Langill also accused the GN of bargaining in bad faith over the last 16 months of negotiations.

“It’s our opinion that the negotiating team for the government has never intended to do anything other than get to a point where they can impose terms and conditions as quickly as possible,” he said.

Since Oct. 2009 the government has applied for mediation under the Nunavut Public Service Act, which the union has opposed.

If the mediation produces a contract that one side doesn’t like, 21 days later the government can impose terms and conditions of employment – and “basically write the contract any way they want,” he said.

Instead of mediation, Langill pushed for voluntary binding interest arbitration, which would produce a binding agreement instead of one that needs to be approved.

Throughout the interview with the media, Langill was careful to avoid the word “strike,” and said if terms and conditions are imposed the union was more likely to challenge the Nunavut Public Service Act in court than take job action.