Candidate’s Speech for Executive Officer, OSSTF District 12

(As delivered at D12’s Annual General Meeting, May 15, 2014.)

Good evening, my name is Rob Scott and I am a teacher. I love being in the classroom and I love the interaction with the students. I am also a branch president and a member of the Collective Bargaining Committee for D12....but resumes are largely irrelevant tonight.

The question for the candidates tonight is “what vision will you bring to the federation as we move forward.” Because if we want new results, then we need a new vision. And I, for one, want new results.

The nations where teachers are the most protected are the nations in which teachers have risen above the realm of politics.

And I firmly believe, that if in ten years, we are still staring at a big electoral map hoping it turns red and not blue, then we have failed. We have failed the teachers we lead, and we have failed the students we teach. We need a new vision.

Here’s my vision.

I believe that membership disengagement is a significant problem facing the OSSTF. We need to reach out and engage our membership, not with one or two outreach events - but as a cultural shift, as a way of doing things.

We need to be in the schools every September and October putting a face on the federation. If a newer teacher doesn’t personally know a leader in the federation by Remembrance Day then the first time they will learn of the union is in a surplus meeting around Easter....and they will likely never become engaged.

Employee engagement is one of the reasons the Japanese auto industry surpassed the US auto industry. They were able to take an idea from an assembly line worker and fully implement it into production in 42 days or less and such ideas were encouraged. But in the OSSTF we have no effective two way communication with front line teachers. Communication should never be an obstacle course.

An engaged membership means more canvassers at campaign time. More ideas from the front lines and more help executing the ideas. It means more of everything that made and makes unionism great.

Not only do we need to improve internal communications, we also need to focus on improving external communications. We need a proactive long term communication plan that will prevent political attacks rather than simply reacting to them.

I believe we need to be proactive in the world of politics as well. I still, for the life of me, do not understand why, when the Liberals were actively courting our support, we did not approach them with a reasonable contract offer in exchange for our full support in the upcoming election. I believe that it is always better to be an opportunist than a reactionary.

Speaking of which, I am honest enough to admit that, at the time, I didn’t know how I felt about $30000 worth of donations, but I know now that the money didn’t even by us grid movement this upcoming September 1....which is why ultimately teachers must elevate themselves and education above the reach of politicians.

Our short term goals necessitate playing politics, but our ten year goal must be to stop playing politics with politicians and start playing education with the public.

Unionism began with a vision, a vision to raise up a middle class. And I hope that you will vote for a vision, a vision to raise up education and educators, whomever it may come from.

My name is Rob Scott.