most contracts having limited cost-of-living (COLA) protections. Albo suspects that things will be different after the province’s budget this summer: “With private sector workers making concessions and inflation going to zero, the pattern of bargaining will be very different in the next cycle.” Negotiations with teachers are coming at the end of this cycle and the beginning of the new one, and these agreements have been consistent with this pattern. PUBLIC OPINION AND BARGAINING Canadian public opinion has always expressed some resentment toward public sector unions. Public sector workers are often shielded from economic shocks because of services being provided for the 'public good' more than for the needs of private production. Thus, public sector work has, to some degree, been less subject to concessions or layoffs (although the threats of privatization and commercialization have been used to undermine workers’ strength in the public sector). To the public, our strikes or service disruptions have an immediate and very direct impact. And unlike professional unions (like doctors and professors) that use their qualifications to make gains, many public sector professionals (like teachers) actually withdraw their services as a (very legitimate) bargaining chip. Public sector unions do earn public support in difficult times if they are seen to be militant and just. Doug Hart, who studies public attitudes toward education at OISE (Ontario Institute for Studies in Education), uses the Ontario under the arch neoliberal Premier Mike Harris as an example. “The Harris government was seen to be a bully, and people trusted the teachers more than the government to say what the education system needed.” In 1998 public ‘faith’ in the education system was at 44%, but hit 60% in 2007. What is interesting is that the public’s opinion of teachers went from 62% to 68% in that same time frame, and much of the public saw “the system as crippling the efforts of teachers” during the unrest of the Harris years. In fact, Hart attributes some of this success to groups like People for Education, whose ability to collect and publish actual data about educational services from
across the province kept the public informed about what was actually happening with service delivery in schools. It is here that Hart’s insight is especially valuable. He identifies the changes to the tax structure (brought in by neoliberal policies) caused the funding shortfall within the entire education system, from daycare to university tuition, from closing schools to IBI therapy for children with autism. But Harris went after the public school teachers and the fight was intensely focused in one area, making the crisis very visible. It cost the Harris government a good deal of time, conflict and votes to fight with teachers. People were angry at the unrest, and many understood that it wasn't about teachers being greedy or lazy: the issue was proper funding for public services (and the taxes that go along with that). The economic crisis is now raising demands from all over the educational map, and not just from public school teachers. “This is not the situation now where the schools are seen as only one, and by no means the most desparate institutions seeking help,” Hart argues. “In the current crisis underfunding of schools is probably much less visible than earlier.” This works against teachers, as they are no longer positioned as victims of conservative thuggery. According to Hart: “To the extent that teachers are less prominently seen in the context of threatened schools, labour disputes will focus public attention on their identity as a relatively highly paid group of public sector professionals charged with what many will regard as an ‘essential service’ even if not legally so.” Teachers’ struggles have become more intertwined with public sector struggles as a whole. JUSTICE AND BARGAINING The Canadian public is generally perceptive enough to see through the typical media anti-public sector messaging. When unions demands are seen as just and when they connect their demands to problems with the system’s underfunding (e.g. overworked nurses in understaffed ERs, teachers with 35 kids in a class), the public may well side with the workers. According to Albo: “In conditions where unions are militant and in pursuit of narrow interests, and
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if they don’t carry the sense of justice with them, they don’t go very far. If they’re connecting their struggles to wider struggles for social justice, they can re-shape the bargaining terrain and win wider public support.” But public sympathy is also limited by interest and understanding. Hart’s data indicates that less than half the public knows that teachers negotiate with a school board. Moreover, there is record high support for increased taxation and funding of public schools (60% and 73%, respectively in 2007) although it is questionable whether the public realizes that the bulk of this goes toward teacher salaries. Hart makes two other observations that relate to the public relations component of our bargaining strategy. The first is that parents have far more faith in their children's own school than in the school system in general. The public can identify more easily with the actual public servant who teaches their kid or collects their trash, as opposed to the abstraction of the union. The obvious implication is that personal relationships can be important for public support, and unions need to build their members’ capacities to fight for social justice and engage public debate. It is also interesting that, according to Hart, public attitudes toward schools and education are often set by people’s own school experience as kids. The positive impact that teachers have on students can play an important role in support for education a generation later. Parent opinion is determined mostly by their relationship to their child's school, and to a lesser extent by their own experiences as a student. So, given the possibility of public sector (including of teachers) job actions in a recession, should we care about public opinion? Again, it all depends on the optics. During the Harris years, people knew that teachers were trying to protect public education. Now, given the public's relationship to public sector bargaining issues, and the relatively positive attitude toward schools, will be more difficult. This should not impinge on bargaining goals. As the saying goes, the dogs bark but the caravan moves on. The public may well be annoyed by pink listings, work to rules, and potential service withdrawals. But public sector