They are speech pathologists, occupational therapists and psychologists who work in public schools, and in the last round of contract talks an arbitrator awarded them a fraction of the salary increase their colleagues received.
It was a decision their own union decried — calling it “totally unacceptable,” even “galling” — but when a group of 53 of them in ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ contacted their local in hopes of launching a pay equity grievance, it refused.
So now, in a rare move, the group has launched a case with the Ontario Labour Relations Board to try to force the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation to act.
They’ve hired a lawyer and filed a “duty of fair representation” complaint, which experts have called both a novel approach — given that they are fighting part of a contract their own union agreed to — and one they warn will be an uphill battle.
“I thought it was really disrespectful” of the union not to take up the cause, said Veronika Lukacs, an occupational therapist who started asking questions after details of the arbitrated deal came to light in May of 2024.
“It also made me feel really confused,” said Lukacs, who spoke to the Star along with co-complainants Katie Tsang, Sheila Loughrey-O’Brien and Gary Labovitz. “I thought ‘that doesn’t make any sense’ — they sent us an email saying the result was unacceptable.
“I presented them with a possible solution; one would think that a union would want to act in the best interest of their members to try and figure it out. And then my possible solution got ignored.”
ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ public school trustees have a week to hand them in, cut off from the public while the
The complainants belong to a bargaining unit within the union that represents Professional Student Services Personnel, in job categories that are female-dominated — occupational therapy, physiotherapy, speech and language pathology, psychological services and social work.
Across the province, the unit represents about 3,000 members.
In ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½, their male “comparator” groups for pay equity purposes include managers, who Lukacs said her own research indicates received much higher salary bumps, as did teachers.
“I think our small group of professionals — highly educated women — received the worst raise in the provincial public sector,” added Lukacs, saying the yearly increase works out to less than one per cent a year, compared to teachers, who received almost 12 per cent over four years.
The $1 an hour, however, mirrored the deal that CUPE’s school boards’ bargaining unit reached for its education workers, who include education assistants, custodians and early childhood educators who typically earn much less than teachers and professional staff.
Because the case is before the labour board, the provincial Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation and ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½’s District 12 did not wish to comment when contacted by the Star.Â
However, in a May 2024 email to all members across the province that was submitted as part of the group’s complaint, the union announced details of the arbitrated settlement but noted the “setback for us in the decision was the totally unacceptable compensation result for our over 3,000 Professional Student Support Personnel (PSSP) members,” adding it “arrived at a result that completely disregarded and unfairly penalized PSSP and similar members.”
From left, Gary Labovitz, Katie Tsang, Veronika Lukacs and Sheila Loughrey-O’Brien.
GIOVANNI CAPRIOTTIThe “nominal” salary increase, it added, “is all the more galling when cast against the grim backdrop of the student mental health crisis that many of these workers are so qualified to address.”
The arbitration process, agreed to by the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation and the provincial government to sort out salary issues, ended with a contract to cover the period from 2022 to 2026.
In its complaint, the group says the local denied pay equity plan violations, failed to offer “concrete explanations” and arbitrarily denied grievance arbitration with the ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ District School Board.
The group also wanted updated information on salaries for comparison, as well as “evidence of pay equity compliance” and ongoing tracking to ensure compliance.
Many worry the edict will affect how ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½’s public schools handle certain topics,
The group had a petition signed by 125 in its small, 300-member local unit asking for support in a grievance, and alleged the denial was potentially discriminatory and showed “a lack of good faith on behalf of the leadership.”
About 100 members contributed to the group’s legal fund.
“The union could have advanced certain positions — they could have advocated for our clients,” said their lawyer, . “And they didn’t.”
The union local has not provided full disclosure on relevant salary comparisons, she added, and had promised to look into the pay equity issue but did not.
York University Prof. David Doorey, who specializes in work law and labour relations, said a union can’t be blamed for an arbitrator’s decision, noting “it is very difficult for union members to win (duty of fair representation) cases that challenge collective bargaining strategies and outcomes.”
Labour boards, he added, “recognize that unions need to balance a huge range of interests and concerns and that collective bargaining outcomes rarely satisfy everyone. Therefore, unions are granted wide discretion to decide on their bargaining strategies.”
He said “absent evidence of bad faith or discrimination by the union’s bargaining team, labour boards take a hands-off approach and defer to the union’s judgment. I’d be surprised if this complaint succeeds.”
Alison Braley-Rattai, a labour studies professor at Brock University, called the case “extraordinarily unusual.”
The overarching idea behind duty of fair representation is “to balance out the fact that union leadership, as voted in by the members, has enormous discretion over how to represent that membership. Individual members cannot bargain individually with their employer, and (leaders) have to have enormous discretion, otherwise they can’t really freely and fairly represent them.”
Unions represent the interests of all members, and “it has to be a balancing act,” she said, adding that at the same time, the union cannot be “arbitrary in its decision about how to represent, it may not be discriminatory in its decision about how to represent” and cannot act in bad faith.
She said the failure rate of duty-of-fair-representation cases is “astronomical. And the reason is because, as a general rule, unions do turn their minds to trying to represent their members fairly .”
But for Marshall, the secondary teachers’ union was “very selective, and when they were called out on that,” didn’t act to address the concerns of the professional staffers, who are a small group within its 60,000 members.
“The union has all the control,” she added. “In this case, they’ve decided within their membership whose rights are worth advancing and whose aren’t, because it’s like a chess game for them.”
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