Teachers have three weeks to consider how they will vote on an offer from the provincial negotiating committee. But where is the dispute going now?
The offer on the table for members to vote on is a three-year deal with an eight per cent pay rise.
Both the Saskatchewan Teachers’ Federation (STF) and the government agreed to send the agreement to a teacher vote after two days of negotiations.
“We will present those facts to members and give them the opportunity to weigh the benefits and potential consequences or risks of voting for or against and come to an informed decision on their own,” STF President Samantha Becotte said in a Press conference. conference on Thursday.
“I certainly hope that STF members take a serious opportunity to look at what’s on the table and make a decision about what will be best for students,” Education Minister Jeremy Cockrill said after question period Thursday. .
The offer is missing major advances on class size and complexity, although it does include a line on a Memorandum of Understanding which the government says will help better direct education funding and give teachers more say.
Charles Smith is an associate professor of political studies at St. Thomas More College, University of Saskatchewan. He said it makes sense for the STF to put the “final offer” to a vote, even if the outcome is not guaranteed.
“I think it’s a gamble, but also an important part of the process to allow members to make their voices heard,” Smith said. “Given our situation, right now let’s let the members decide and then we go from there.”
Smith called it a “tactical move” given how long the dispute has been going on and with the end of the school year approaching.
“The government might be thinking that members are fatigued, that they actually support a deal like this, given some of the policies they’ve put forward outside of the collective bargaining framework, they might have felt like they’ve reached that threshold,” Smith said. saying. “The union might be seeing something opposite.”
Despite putting the possible agreement to a vote, the STF failed to tell teachers how to vote.
“The fact that [the STF] does not endorse or endorse this agreement with respect to the members vote, it tells me they are not happy,” Smith said.
“It is unfortunate that we are submitting a final offer, not an actual, good-faith tentative agreement in which both sides have agreed to the points included,” Becotte said. “After two days of seeing little to no movement, we felt it was time to accept their final offer and have the members review it and give their voice within the process.”
“If it is not ratified, there is a possibility that further action will be taken,” Becotte added.
Smith said lingering issues related to class size and complexity will still be waiting in the next round of negotiations, even if teachers vote in favor.
“Assuming it was accepted, this is a three-year deal, which means they’re going to be back at the negotiating table sooner rather than later and these issues aren’t going to go away,” Smith said. “In fact, they might even become more complex.”
Smith said there are three possible scenarios from the vote: a resounding yes, a result that Smith said would be a surprise, a resounding no or a closer split of the vote.
“That leaves a lot of different questions open if we don’t see those numbers.” “At the end of the day, I think what people want is to return to a classroom without interruptions, where it is properly funded and recognized as a classroom that is more complex today than ever. I’m not sure we will get there in the May vote ”.
“I think this is the best the union thought they could get at this time,” Smith added.
Another persistent element outside of the teacher vote is distrust between the STF and the government, something Smith traces back to a controversial provincial ad campaign that made headlines in the summer of 2023.
“That to me suggested there was a poison pill in the negotiations from the beginning, and it’s just gone downhill from there,” Smith said. “All the bad blood that has arisen, assuming the government is re-elected, there will be similar players at the table dealing with the same issues, so we have to be aware of that.”
Cockrill said Thursday that he is committed to “building relationships” in the sector with teachers, parents and more.
“Negotiation is difficult, there are not many winners when it comes to negotiating,” Cockrill said. “I don’t think anyone has lost more during this whole process than our children in this province.”
Regardless of how teachers vote, the dispute will likely be a key issue during the next provincial election in the fall.
The STF’s approximately 13,500 members will vote on the offer on May 8 and 9.