Sick of teacher strikes? There’s a better way

Teacher strikes in Saskatchewan hurt students and should be banned. Binding arbitration, not picket lines, is the solution

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Teacher strikes shouldn’t happen in Saskatchewan—or anywhere else in Canada. Yet over the past couple of years, students in the province’s public and Catholic school systems have paid the price for a bitter labour dispute that could have been resolved far more constructively.

The previous collective agreement between the province and the Saskatchewan Teachers’ Federation (STF) expired in 2023. While salaries were one point of disagreement, the main contention centred on working conditions, particularly the thorny issue of classroom complexity.

STF leaders recognized they needed to push beyond the usual demand for smaller class sizes. A class of 30 well-behaved students at similar academic levels is much easier to manage than a class of 20 with significant behavioural challenges and wide learning gaps.

Imagine teaching a Grade 5 class where some students read at a Grade 8 level while others struggle with Grade 2 material. The days of giving all students the same assignment and grading them on a single standard are long gone. So it was reasonable for STF to want classroom complexity taken seriously in a new agreement.

But it’s also unrealistic to expect a single, provincewide collective agreement to solve a problem that varies so widely between schools. These agreements are, by nature, broad in scope. Since they’re bargained provincially, not locally, it’s nearly impossible to draft a clause on classroom complexity that would satisfy every teacher in the province.

This impasse led to a damaging standoff. Initially, STF proposed binding arbitration, which the provincial government rejected. Later, the province reversed its position and offered arbitration, but STF then declined. By the time the issue reached the arbitration board, a great deal of classroom time and extracurricular activity had been lost to rotating strikes and work-to-rule campaigns.

In the end, the arbitration board awarded a nine per cent salary increase for teachers over three years. More importantly, it included a classroom complexity clause: Saskatchewan school boards must hire additional staff to support teachers, and the province must establish a $20-million complexity fund, over and above regular school funding.

These are reasonable steps forward on a difficult issue. Now it’s up to STF and the provincial government to work out how these resources will support teachers and improve student outcomes.

But this labour dispute never needed to escalate. If the province had accepted binding arbitration from the outset, or if STF hadn’t later walked away from it, students wouldn’t have been caught in the crossfire.

Simply put, teacher strikes should not be part of how education disputes are resolved. Teachers should be in classrooms, not on picket lines. Binding arbitration offers a fair, effective alternative that protects both sides and, more importantly, keeps students learning.

That’s exactly how things work in Manitoba. In the 1950s, the Manitoba Teachers’ Society (MTS) voluntarily gave up the right to strike in exchange for binding arbitration. Today, Manitoba teachers enjoy some of the highest salaries in the country. Clearly, arbitration hasn’t weakened their bargaining power.

It’s true that Manitoba teachers do not yet have a classroom complexity clause in their agreement. But thanks to the precedent set in Saskatchewan, MTS may be able to achieve that in future negotiations.

What matters now is ensuring students don’t suffer again. Saskatchewan should adopt binding arbitration permanently to settle teacher disputes and keep education where it belongs: in the classroom.

Michael Zwaagstra is a public high school teacher and a senior fellow with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.