Teachers hit the streets in North Battleford for the second round of rotating strikes. (Angela Brown/battlefordsNOW Staff)

By Angela Brown

Negotiations stall again

Battlefords area teachers join in second round of rotating strikes

Feb 16, 2024 | 4:00 PM

Battlefords area teachers took to the streets Friday for the second round of rotating strikes in the province.

Teachers from Living Sky and Light of Christ school divisions, and at Sakewew High School, and École Père Mercure were represented in the job walk-off locally.

Tri-West Teachers Association vice-president Brienne Seery, who is also a teacher at École Père Mercure, said the teachers haven’t given up following the second breakdown of negotiations.

“They’re stalled but we’re feeling hopeful that we can get our point across about class size and complexity, and how important it is to get into our contract because the students are not all succeeding,” she said. “All of them should have the opportunity to succeed.”

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Seery said it’s frustrating for the teachers to be out on the picket lines again, but everyone seems to be in good spirits.

“We want to show the government that a sustainable funding for education is important,” she said.

The Saskatchewan Teachers’ Federation recently announced that talks with the province’s Government-Trustee Bargaining Committee on Feb. 12 had broken down.

Micheal Hagel, president of the Tri-West Teachers’ Association and member of the STF executive, said when the teachers’ union returned to the negotiating table, their focus was on class size composition.

“That’s the thing we want to talk about first, and salary after that,” he said.

Hagel said the teachers union first went back to the table as part of “good faith bargaining.”

“They [the province] said they have a different mandate,” he noted. “So it was important to go back to the table to see what that mandate was.”

Overall, Hagel is disappointed the government won’t negotiate class size and complexity, even though he said this issue is negotiated in other provinces.

Education Minister Jeremy Cockrill said the province offered a higher salary in its latest offer, which was “closer to what the union had originally asked for,” which was two per cent per year plus an adjustment for cost of living or the consumer price index (CPI), or as the province estimated about a 23.4 per cent increase over four years increase.

He said teachers could see an increase of 12 per cent over the next four years, according to projected CPI increase, in the province’s latest offer, similar to what a Saskatchewan MLA increase would be, a step up from the seven per cent over three years originally offered teachers.

“We thought we had made some good progress towards getting a deal done,” Cockrill added. “We were clear last week that to come back to the bargaining table that we were not going to talk about class size and complexity. We’ve been clear all along that classroom size and complexity are not to be included in a provincially-bargained agreement. We’re not going down that road.”

He noted this issue is the responsibility of locally elected school boards, not union leadership.

Cockrill said the province still wants to see a resolution to the bargaining.

“We understand that disruptions in the classroom that has a fairly negative effect on kids, on families, as well as the teaching staff in our schools,” he said. “We want to get a deal done so it’s a little bit disappointing to see the bargaining process fall apart this week.”

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angela.brown@pattisonmedia.com

On X: @battlefordsNOW