By Carol Baldwin | Wakaw Recorder
Dates have officially been set for the binding arbitration proceedings between Saskatchewan’s Teachers’ Bargaining Committee and the Government-Trustee Bargaining Committee. The arbitration hearing will take place from December 16 to 20 in Saskatoon, with previously announced Dawn Harkness named for the Teachers’ Bargaining Committee and Greg Chatlain as nominee for the Government-Trustee Bargaining Committee on the panel. Daniel Ish, a former University of Saskatchewan law professor and dean of the College of Law, will serve as arbitrator.
According to the Saskatchewan Teachers’ Federation (STF), during the arbitration hearing, both sides will have the opportunity to submit written positions and make presentations on the two issues: wages and the class complexity-accountability framework.
“The panel will weigh the facts and rationale presented and the arbitrator’s decision will be delivered in the form of a legally binding written report, delivered after the process has been completed,” the STF said in a press release. “Any awards through the arbitration process will become part of the final Provincial Collective Bargaining Agreement.”
On August 8th, Manitoba’s public school teachers voted in favour of a new tentative collective agreement. The province’s first mega-contract will raise general wages by over 12 percent and establish a standardized salary scale for 2026-27. The contract combines 37 division-specific contracts and will expire June 30, 2026. Its expiration will coincide with the September 2026 rollout of a new provincewide teacher salary schedule.
The Manitoba Teachers’ Society has advocated for several years for a provincial bargaining agreement which would harmonize salaries and working conditions. Ninety-five percent of MTS’s anglophone members cast ballots in favour of the deal, with a turnout rate of nearly 70 percent. Teachers endorsed annual salary hikes, retroactive to 2022, of 2.5 percent, 2.75 percent, three percent, and three percent with an additional “retention adjustment” of one percent during the final year. By the end of the agreement, the province’s most veteran and highly trained educators will earn upwards of $125,000, regardless of where they work. Under the harmonized grid, new hires with a bachelor’s degree in education will make more than $70,000 annually. Within a decade, those employees will earn six-figure salaries, without additional credentials.
Cameron Hauseman, an associate professor of educational administration at the University of Manitoba, said the new contract should entice more people to enter the teaching workforce, a positive result especially when schools are grappling with staffing shortages. “These salary figures are astronomical,” he said. “Manitoba teachers are now among the highest-paid in the country, and Canada is already known for being relatively generous when it comes to teacher salaries,”
The former Progressive Conservative government introduced legislative changes in 2020 to lay the groundwork for a singular, all-encompassing contract.
Similar to Saskatchewan, an impasse in negotiations led union and employer representatives to schedule arbitration hearings for this fall. However, their Manitoba counterparts continued to meet in hopes of resolving an agreement beforehand. A deal on the now-official contract was reached on July 11. Lead negotiator Arlyn Filewich told teachers during a virtual briefing last month, that the extra one percent added to the final year of the contract as a “retention adjustment” along with the eventual harmonization of the collective salaries, made the deal significantly appealing to the negotiators. Filewich said staff members concluded binding arbitration was likely to yield a similar or worse deal, owing to a recent pattern in public sector negotiations that does not include a “retention adjustment.”
The Manitoba agreement also includes items that in Saskatchewan are negotiated locally such as earned days off in return for voluntary extracurricular activity, personal leave, and preparation time. For Manitoba teachers, the contract’s non-salary items include a 5.5-hour limit on instructional days and an increase in the minimum preparation time, so teachers are entitled to 210 minutes of prep every cycle (typically a six-school day rotation) in 2025-26, a single day off is to be credited for 50 hours of voluntary extracurricular activity, up to a maximum of three days, up to two days of personal leave per year, reimbursement of sick time, and up to $1,000 for costs after an on-the-job injury. The contract also guarantees paid leave for up to three days for traditional Indigenous ceremonial, cultural and spiritual observances.
Teachers in the Frontier, Flin Flon and Kelsey school divisions will receive an additional $3,000 northern allowance, and educators who teach at least 12 percent of the time in an Indigenous language will be compensated with a $500 allowance.
The Manitoba contract covers all educators except employees of the Division scolaire franco-manitobaine and those who belong to MTS federal bargaining units in Sandy Bay Ojibway First Nation and Nelson House.
Saskatchewan teachers rejected a contract offer by the government in a vote held on May 29th and 30th. The offer contained an 8 percent salary increase over three years, retroactive to 2023, plus a one-time market adjustment of one percent and compression of the first two steps of the STF salary grid. It also included benefit enhancements, allowances for principals and vice-principals, and a ‘violence-free classrooms’ policy table.
The big sticking point throughout negotiations was the issue of class size and complexity. To that point, the rejected offer had included the creation of a special task force and language referencing an accountability framework included in a memorandum of understanding (MOU) committing the province to increased education funding. The offer also added an extra $18 million in funding per year to address class size and complexity beyond the MOU.
The rejection of the offer led the Government-Trustee Bargain Committee to call for Binding Arbitration, but the Teachers’ Bargaining Committee refused. Once the Government-Trustee Bargaining Committee committed, in writing, that the class complexity-accountability framework would be part of the joint submission for arbitration, the Teachers’ Bargaining Committee brought the proposal to its members. Approximately three-quarters of members believed binding arbitration to be the best path forward. This was consistent throughout all consultations.
Saskatchewan teachers will be waiting to see if the contracted salary increases in Manitoba will weigh in the arbitrator’s decision on teacher salaries in this province.
