A Woman's Place in OECTA

A WOMAN’S PLACE IN OECTA

By Carley Desjardins

“Why are 300 Catholic educators sitting here on plush chairs in Toronto’s newest, poshest hotel on a sun-drenched Saturday afternoon in October, and why is that woman on stage talking about such terrible things?”

It was October 1985. The educators were classroom teachers, superintendents, nuns, priests, directors of education, consultants, and support staff from all over Ontario; they represented all kinds of “who’s who” in Catholic education attending a conference on women’s issues. The conference, “Images II,” was co-sponsored by the Equal Opportunity Committee of OECTA and the Affirmative Action Committee of the Metropolitan Separate School Board (MSSB), and the woman addressing them was Maude Barlow, former senior advisor on women’s issues in the Prime Minister’s Office.

According to the December 1985 issue of The Reporter, OECTA’s official publication of the time, one conference delegate explained that it was time to take a look at how society had changed in just a few short years. “The impact of broken homes, one-parent families, single-parent breadwinners and the need for more and better child care has forced people to look at how roles have changed.”

The same issue of The Reporter covered a conference organized by the Ontario Advisory Council of Women’s Issues, which hosted 500 young women from high schools across the province. Former Provincial Attorney General Ian Scott, who was also the minister responsible for women’s issues at the time, explained to delegates that women of the day earned “only about 63 per cent of what men earn.” Later in his remarks, he added, “The government plans to increase child care spaces, ask industries to provide equal pay for work of equal value, and is encouraging employers to provide incentives for women.”

Fast forward some 30-plus years later, and much of this sounds all too familiar. Here we are nearing the end of 2018, in the midst of the next women’s movement and on the heels of OECTA’s inaugural women’s leadership conference, Fempower, which brought together more than 200 women members and leaders from across the Association; providing a unique opportunity to meet and share concerns and experiences particular to women in the workplace, and to build capacity in a positive, safe space.

As Catherine Marshall, Assistant Professor of Education at the University of Pennsylvania explained in that same issue of The Reporter back in 1985, “People are motivated to achieve when they identify with others in similar positions, when they have access to relevant training, when the criteria for success are clear, when a mentor supports and trains them and when they have personal and social supports to help them endure difficult tasks as they seek their career goals.”

Women make up 76 per cent of the Association’s membership, and this segment of OECTA’s history highlights some of the defining moments women have had within the Association.

THE STRUGGLE BY MARRIED WOMEN FOR A FAIR SALARY

Reprint from the April 1994 edition of The Reporter.

“Married women teachers have the right to the same salaries and benefits as single women and male teachers.” This was the cause that Anne Wright, the 1994 recipient of the Marion Tyrrell Award of Merit, fought for in co-operation with many of her married women colleagues in the early 1950s.

Margaret Lynch, First President of OECTA, 1944-45. Teachers’ Council. Ms. Lynch served three terms as Director of OECTA.

Wright started her teaching career with the Toronto Separate School Board in 1948. She taught elementary school in Toronto for five years during which she was president of the Toronto Catholic Women Teachers’ Association. She retired in 1993 after a distinguished career in Ontario and California, including several years spent teaching at the Faculty of Education of the University of Toronto.

In 1953, Anne Wright married. As a result, her salary was reduced to the minimum and she lost her permanent teacher status. In those days, both public and separate school boards in Ontario hired married women only when no other teachers were available. In the Toronto Separate School Board, once a female teacher married, she lost her permanent contract, was removed from the salary schedule and, if rehired, became part of the Emergency Married Women Teachers’ List. She was then given a temporary position at a salary 20 to 25 per cent below the regular teacher’s minimum.

The teachers’ unions did not at first object to these policies. However, in 1953, OECTA and other affiliates approved changes eliminating such discrimination from the Ontario Teachers’ Federation’s policies. In 1954 the issue assumed crisis proportions for the OECTA executive. Some 60 married women teachers in the newly created Metropolitan Separate School Board (MSSB) advised their employer that they were going on strike within a few days unless their salaries and contracts were improved.

The married women, led by Anne Wright and Jacqueline Matte received very little support from the press, the public or OECTA. The board’s offer to the group was to raise the salaries of married women to $1,800 a year, compared to $2,400 for single female teachers, with no other improvements. On January 14, 36 members of the Toronto Catholic Married Teachers’ Association voted unanimously, with four abstentions, to notify the board that they would not report to work the following Tuesday unless they were paid according to their experience. In his new history of OECTA, Be a Teacher, Dr. Robert Dixon quotes the women as saying in a press interview, they could “get better salaries as store clerks.”

OECTA’s provincial executive issued a press release stating, “The OECTA deplores the threat of a strike action by the married women teachers of the Separate Schools in Toronto and will give no support in such a procedure.” The following night, the executive sent a letter to the 67 married teachers advising them that “…if the strike threat is carried out, the OECTA Provincial Executive will immediately take disciplinary action recommending to the Department of Education the suspension of your teaching certificates.”

The night before the strike Ann Wright and Jacqueline Matte were asked to appear before an in-camera session of the board to present their case. Monsignor H.J. Callahan, chairman of the board advised them that, “A strike against the board is a strike against God.” The combination of remarks such as these and the executive’s letter caused support for the strike to dissipate over the weekend. District 5 Toronto president and chief negotiator Joseph Whelan and the married women teachers agreed that the Negotiating Committee would continue bargaining on their behalf and that the strike would be “postponed.”

Dixon writes in Be a Teacher that in an interview in 1993, Anne Wright remembered how no one seemed to support them. “Some of their parents asked them if they had become Communists,” he writes.

Marie Kennedy, OECTA President 1970-71, speaking at Hamilton pension rally, April 1, 1989.

“Even Whelan told them that the board would not change its policy and that they knew what they were getting into when they married; they had not been forced to marry.”

The crisis was over and the married women teachers ended up with almost nothing. In March, the board decided that, in view of the “generous increase” in salary to the married women and of the “unsettled situation financially” of the MSSB, there would be no further salary increase. However, the board would give contracts to the married women teachers (only annually, however) and would change its policy so that any female teacher who married during the school year would stay on the regular teacher’s contract and salary until the end of June. Only in 1959 did the board rescind its policy on married women teachers, paying them the same salaries as the single female teachers.

It was not until 1961 that an important legal precedent was set in the equitable treatment of married women teachers. Mrs. Conrad Grenier who was on a permanent contract with the Cochrane Separate School Board, was asked for her resignation when she married. She asked for and received a Board of Reference. OECTA hired a lawyer to represent her, but the school board withdrew its request. This appeared to settle the matter for any similar actions by school boards in the future.

OECTA ADOPTS POLICY OF EQUAL PAY FOR EQUAL WORK

In Be a Teacher, Reverend C.L. Siegried, CR, OECTA President in 1955-56, recalled, “Another area of grave concern was establishing the principle of equal pay for equal work. OTF had adopted this policy, but when it came to the floor of the OECTA annual meeting of 1956, it was a hotly-debated issue. Some men objected to the policy, arguing that as they were the breadwinners of families, they should receive more than women teachers. But other speakers pointed out that many women were also supporting relatives. Finally, we passed the resolution that, ‘OECTA adopt the policy of equal pay for equal work, except where such policy would restrict the charity of religious teachers.’”

WOMAN INITIALLY DENIED ACCESS TO USE SICK DAYS TO UNDERGO IN VITRO FERTILIZATION

In 1985, a teacher was diagnosed as being unable to conceive. She was away from school for 10 days to undergo in vitro fertilization. Ten days pay was docked and sick leave was denied. Despite arguments claiming that she had undergone medical treatment to circumvent a physiological condition preventing conception, salary was still denied. OECTA filed a grievance against the employer and achieved access to sick days for this purpose.

PROVINCE-WIDE MATERNITY LEAVE TOP-UP

During the 2012 round of provincial bargaining, the Association successfully negotiated a province-wide top-up of Employment Insurance maternity benefits to 100 per cent of gross annual salary for the first six weeks of pregnancy; this was extended from six to eight weeks the following year. This was a major win for members across the province, as most local collective agreements were remiss of any maternity leave topup prior to 2012.

TERMINATION DUE TO PREGNANCY

“We regret that we must consider your request for a Leave of Absence as a termination as of December 31st, 1969. This is necessary since our Board does not yet approve maternity leaves. When you are ready to return, you should notify our office of your availability for another teaching position.”

Female members across the province were terminated by their respective employer due to pregnancy. This practice continued with some boards into the early 1980s.