What Labour Dispute?

With the Peel Board and it's teachers currently unable to come terms over a new contract, the teacher's union is trying to pressure the board with a work to rule campaign. For those of you who don't know, working to rule differs from normal working in that while teachers teach all of their required classes every day, they refuse to do any extra volunteer work, such as coaching school teams or being staff advisor for a student organisation. If you're one of those students who just comes to class every day and then heads straight home after school so that you won't miss all your favourite TV shows, then this won't really affect you very much. I guess it wouldn't make much difference to you either if you were one of that other kind of student, the type who just skips class to hang around the alcoves outside the tech wing in order to smoke, biding your time until you or your underage girlfriend get pregnant and you get to drop out of school and live off welfare. Most students though, are probably affected somewhat by the work to rule. Many of these effects are obvious; no school newspaper (other than HTP of course), no intramural sports, no math contests, and no Chinese Christian Fellowship. In other areas, questions arise; will there be a yearbook? What's going to happen with Grad this year? Will there be any school dances? Wonder no more, because HTP has conducted an investigation into just how various school organisations have been affected by work to rule. Our findings are presented below.

The SAC

The SAC is one of only a few organisations that is still up and running, allowing them to continue performing such vital functions as running the locker system and organising Spirit Days for the students to ignore. Since Administrators are part of a separate union, our friends the student council have managed to side-step the work to rule situation by having members of the Administration as their staff sponsor. As well the SAC has a dance planned for December 11, but unless teachers end their protest by next month the dance will have to be cancelled.

The Prefects

Barred from meeting inside a classroom, or even in their conveniently located office, the Prefects are now forced to hold their weekly meetings out on the bleachers. The group, whose traditional focus has been on charity, now finds itself forced to move in a new direction due to its inability to hold any of its standard fund-raisers. "We're amusing ourselves." said Prefect Matt Campagna, explaining the group's change in direction. "Most of what we do is because of fund-raising, but when we can't are alternative is to just have fun." Campagna is head of the Prefect's Personal Development Committee, which is the only Prefect committee that is currently active. The Personal Development Committee focus is on keeping up Prefect morale, and helping new Prefects form a bond with each other and with the organisation. Without a staff sponsor the Prefects are unable to access their bank account, and thus unable to pay for say, soap for one of their charity car wash or burgers for their traditional fall BBQ. They do however plan to run a UNICEF program for Halloween, Campagna said, as they did even during last year's teacher's strike. With so little to do in the way of charity though, the Prefects run the risk of losing their sense of purpose. Thus they have shifted their group focus, and now plan weekend Prefect parties with the same planning skills they once used to orchestrate fund-raising events that raised money for many worthwhile charities. Although Prefects meetings are now attendance optional (as opposed to before, see "The Prefect Drug" in HTP v3i4), about eighty percent of members still attend regularly, and Campagna is confident that Prefect moral remains high. "There are allot of people who wish they could be doing the more charitable stuff," he said, reflecting on the group's new, more leisurely, focus, "but having to do this all the time isn't such a raw deal."

The Yearbook

Sources I talked to within what seemed to be a rather disorganised yearbook organisation assured me that the yearbook would come out this year, which must be good news to all of you have already paid for your yearbooks through your student fees. Admittedly, they said that work on the yearbook so far was "backtracked", and they didn't even have a theme let alone any content yet. But don't worry, this just means that they'll have to work extra hard during second semester (assuming the work to rule is over by then). This might not necessarily me a bad thing, since a second semester focus might help make up for recent yearbook efforts in which that half of the year was ignored entirely.

The Football Team

At first glance, the loss of the Woodland's beloved football team might seem to be a devastating blow to school spirit. After all, some local high school football pundits had speculated that this might be the year that the team breaks out of it's two year losing streak and once again rises to the dizzying heights of the '95 season when it won a game by default when the other team failed to show up. But resident gym teacher, and former Football coach Mr. Haist doesn't feel that Woodlands students are upset by the loss of their football team, or any other team for that matter. "None of (the students) have been banging on my door complaining, so I don't know if they are losing out." Beyond football, all other fall sports, such as golf and girl's basketball, have already been cancelled, but Haist said there was still hope that the winter and spring teams might still be able to play if the labour dispute is resolved soon enough. Mr. Haist did express some regret that the labour situation had cost Woodlands so many potential athletic glories, saying "I don't know if we'd have been competitive to the point where we'd be in championships or finals or that, but we would have been participating." Unfortunate as the current situation is, Haist says it may just be a preview of a post-Bill 160 future in which teachers will be unable or unwilling to volunteer the countless hours needed to coach school sports teams, as they may be required to work an extra 25 minutes or more each day under new government regulations. "That's the sad part," Haist said, "the government doesn't recognise your volunteer time." In the short term though, Haist is confident the program can recover from this year's temporary set back, saying, "If we have a football team next year, I'm sure it would be just as good as it would normally be."

The Grad Committee

Don't worry all you class of '99 types- your Grad is still 100% go, and so far is tentatively scheduled for June 30th. The lack of teacher assistance isn't that big a problem for the Grad Committee, since they get their support from the Administration and their funding through the SAC. "The biggest problem is booking a hall," said one Grad Committee member, adding that some locations such as Niagara Falls and the Royal York had already fallen through. Grad Breakfast might not run though, but maybe that's just as well. It just wouldn't be the same without Terry Lee.