Catholic Elementary Teachers and McGuinty Come to Two Year Agreement

The Catholic elementary teachers union and the McGuinty government have come to a two year agreement. From the Spec website:

The union representing 45,000 Catholic school teachers agreed to a two-year wage freeze and three unpaid “professional development days” in the second year of the contract, which Broten said would amount to a 1.5 per cent pay cut.
The province has also agreed that the wage freeze and three unpaid days will also apply to principals and vice-principals.

So only a two year freeze, plus trading days off for a pay cut for a single year. Not bad, but an exercise in kicking the can down the road. Perhaps McGuinty anticipates not being in office then. Unfortunately with the deficit as high as it is and inflation as low as it is, a three year freeze (which McGuinty was originally seeking) would have done a better job of aligning teacher salaries with what the Ontario revenues can pay. However sick days appear to have been fixed:

Under the agreement, teachers will no longer be allowed to bank sick days and their allotment of 20 sick days a year will be cut to 10, Broten said.

Can't complain about that and certainly not a case of kicking the can down the road. 

However what hasn't been made explicit in the article is whether teachers are getting frozen on the grid. That's the increases that new teachers get each year until they reach the maximum. As this post of mine makes clear, freezing the grid actually saves more money than just freezing the pay levels, but allowing teachers to still move up the grid. This quote in the article suggests that the grid isn't frozen (despite McGuinty originally asking for it):

Union president Kevin O’Dwyer said the savings will ensure that beginner teachers don’t bear the brunt of austerity.

If one union has agreed to this, that puts a lot of pressure on the other unions to accept the same concessions. I consider this a Pyrrhic victory for the teachers unions. Only a two year deal and no grid freeze (assuming it isn't frozen) isn't bad. For the Ontario economy, a loss. To get the deficit under control a 10% pay cut plus a three year freeze (without grid freezing) is necessary, especially considering 2012 is looking week, both from a GDP growth perspective and more importantly a GDP per capita growth perspective. Unpalatable, but there are lots of unemployed teacher college graduates in Ontario that would take a job if teachers left from such a cut. Which I doubt they would.