Jesus Christ!

If college professors, college administrators, janitors, government bureaucrats, and garbage collectors can work together in the OPSEU, why the Hell do Ontario teachers need to divide themselves solely on the basis of linguistic and religious affiliation? No wonder most vote Liberal. We have educators in my province incapable of understanding the value of labour solidarity!

I'm sure everyone in OPSEU is of the same religion and has the same linguistic background.

[ 12 April 2004: Message edited by: NDP Newbie ]

It's just an excuse to restrict their organisation and bargaining rights while most of them don't even notice.

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Originally posted by LukeVanc:
While public funding for French schools is legitimate, public funding for Catholic schools is not.

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Oh, please, no. We don't need this issue on Babble. Ontario's Catholic schools have been publicly funded since the 1850s if not earlier.

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Originally posted by Wilfred Day:
Oh, please, no. We don't need this issue on Babble. Ontario's Catholic schools have been publicly funded since the 1850s if not earlier.

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Originally posted by NDP Newbie:
There are nurses in the CAW? WTF?

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If you go to the site and click on "Affiliates," you'll see that the Association des enseignantes et des enseignants franco-ontariens (5,893 members), the Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario (53,072 members), the Ontario English Catholic Teachers' Associations (33,721 members)
and the Ontario Secondary School Teachers' Federation (30,906 members) are all component organizations.

Like Jeff House points out, there are different unions at least in part because they each have collective bargaining relationships with different employers. There's also a lot of individual history behind each affiliate (what's the deal with the ETFO originally being split into a women's union and a male teachers union?! Fortunately that no longer appears to be the case.)

Today, as I understand it, the OTF is a pretty decentralized organization, so most of the real decision-making takes place in each affiliate rather than at the central level. That's different than many private sector unions like the CAW, which concentrates a lot more power in the hands of the head office, and particularly, the president (in the CAW case, Buzz Hargrove). Is this a good thing or a bad thing? I don't know. I figure it's really up to the members of the organization to figure out what sort of structure suits them best.

[ 13 April 2004: Message edited by: robbie_dee ]