The teachers’ union has launched an online petition against the Greater Victoria school district for trying to stop substitute teachers from winning temporary contracts and then promptly going on maternity leave.
The petition accuses the district of violating the rights of pregnant teachers by denying them work.
“This is plain old 1950s discrimination,” said Tara Ehrcke, contract chairwoman and past president of the Greater Victoria Teachers’ Association.
More than 700 people have signed the union’s petition on change.org, including district trustees Catherine Alpha and Deborah Nohr.
The district intends to make it a requirement that temporary teachers agree to work at least half their contract.
Officials say substitute teachers have been using a “loophole” that allows them to win temporary postings and then work only a few weeks before going on leave. In some cases, they have gone on leave before the job even starts.
The teachers get benefits, accumulate seniority and receive a “top-up” on their employment insurance to full pay while on leave, but students can sometimes suffer when multiple teachers rotate through a classroom, the district says.
Mark Walsh, the district’s manager of labour relations, said the issue surfaced in 2007, but there are now up to a dozen examples each year.
One class at Margaret Jenkins Elementary had six teachers last year due, in part, to a number of substitutes winning the temporary job and then going on leave a few weeks later.
In addition to the stress on students, deputy superintendent Sherri Bell says the practice can double classroom costs as the district ends up paying “top up” benefits for two, three or four teachers in a single classroom.
The union, however, says it will fight any attempt to make availability a condition of employment, and says the Margaret Jenkins case is a “rare exception.”
Ehrcke said it can take up to five years in some cases to get a full-time position in the district. So the substitute teachers applying for and winning temporary job postings could have three, four and five years of experience in temporary postings and are as entitled to benefits as other employees.
Natalie Buchmann, who has been teaching on temporary contracts for five years, said she planned to wait until she got a full-time job before starting a family.
“But it just became apparent to me that I could be waiting 10 years for all I know,” she said.
She also said that, unlike other jobs where benefits kick in after six months or a year, temporary teachers have no coverage unless they have a contract.
So in 2011, and on the advice of an administrator, she won a temporary posting and then gave birth in August and went on maternity before the job began.
She did so, she said, so that she would have benefits and continue to accrue seniority rather than lose ground to someone less senior simply because she wanted to have a child.
