Sask. teachers intensify job action Monday with provincewide work-to-rule

All Saskatchewan teachers will halt extracurricular activities and voluntary supervision on Monday, intensifying job action during drawn-out contract negotiations with the provincial government.

The labour-management dispute between the Saskatchewan government and Saskatchewan Teachers’ Federation (STF) has been going on for months, with both sides blaming the other for halted negotiations and the accompanying affects on classrooms and extracurricular activities.

Beginning Monday, teachers will begin work-to-rule, meaning there will be no voluntary services and teachers will begin their shift 15 minutes before the bell rings and end 15 minutes after. 

In essence, that means teachers will withdraw from all field trips, extracurricular activities including competitions and games, graduation celebrations, book fairs, before- and after-school supervision and noon-hour supervision.

“Obviously I’m there to learn, and I want to learn, but having stuff like that taken away is just unmotivating because there just seems to be a lot less to look forward to in a school day,” said Kaylee Voth.

She’s a grade 12 student at Herbert School in Herbert, Sask., home to about 700 people according to the 2021 Statistics Canada census.

She’s a multi-sport athlete and finishing her final year at the school — which is small enough that grade 12 graduation is the only large graduation celebration — and finds it difficult to come to terms with the results of the job action.

Among the activities being withheld is graduation planning.

Voth responded to a recent Saskatchewan Teachers’ Federation social media post, conveying her disappointment with the ongoing job action and its effect on students. 

Voth said she does not feel she knows enough about the negotiations to choose sides. She said she didn’t write the post to be accusatory, but wanted to “share my thoughts as respectfully as possible.”

“It’s all being put towards the right thing for the teachers and the future of education, but at the same time there’s people being affected by this,” Voth said.

Failed negotiations

Teachers voted in favour of job action last year and began mid-January with one-day provincewide strikes. That was followed by a series of rotating strikes and withdrawals of voluntary duties.

Much of the contract dispute centered around class size and complexity. 

The STF president Samantha Becotte said Friday that the union was asking for one line in the collective agreement to ensure a multi-year funding agreement with the Saskatchewan School Boards Association would benefit students directly and not be put toward debt or other uses.

Becotte said the government declined, leading to escalating job action. 

In a statement to CBC last week, Education Minister Jeremy Cockrill described the job action as “disappointing.”

He said the STF is “moving the goalposts and prioritizing job action that will directly impact students and families instead of returning to the bargaining table.”