Happy New Year folks

As you are no doubt aware we have a new system running parallel with SCARRI right now called Job Shopping. At this point we don't know if it is helpful or a hindrance. We will keep you abreast of its inception and subsequent usage.  Below, please find an analysis of it that I first sent you on January 9. 

JOB SHOPPING PRECIS:

• Your Simcoe County District School Board has introduced “Job Shopping” to act in conjunction with SCARRI call outs and will work in parallel with it.  This new procedure started for daily occasional jobs on Monday January 9th.  A robo notification call was sent out the week of Dec 12th telling one to review their email accounts for recent messages.  All of the instructional information pertaining to this new form of hiring is found in that email in your Board’s email account sent out on Wednesday December 21.
• The decision to do this by the Board was done arbitrarily without any Union group’s input. SCDSB first consulted with us regarding job shopping in September 2015, but did not act on it until now.
• The Board initiated this move because of a large amount of unfilled temp jobs, primarily within other employee groups, most notably; Custodial, EAs, and Elementary OTs. Our Unit’s unfilled jobs were not the problem, as there were only 9 unfilled jobs from Sept start up to the first week of Dec.  Again, we, as your OSSTF Union, have not endorsed its inception.  A restrictive technical glitch with the eschool software (SCARRI version) is it has to be applied to all groups unilaterally.
• From a Union perspective, we see 3 major items related to its introduction:
• Those that are tech savvy will no doubt find it handy to manage future job selections, having a much greater control over job offerings, including requests.
• Another group of supply teachers are ones that are non-techies per say or that don’t have up to date technology for its usage.  As a result, this demographic will see the greatest challenge with the new system and will see huge disadvantages.  They may even see job shopping as punitive towards them. 
• The last thing is it will be life style altering to a high degree. Persons will now be tethered to their technology and will no doubt be getting up very early and staying up very late to search for jobs via computer, tablet, or cell phone.  It essentially puts the onus now on the supply teacher to hunt for jobs at different times when it is open for shopping.  Its hours are between 5pm – 11:59pm for future jobs and 12:00am – 6am for current day jobs.
• From a Union aspect is the obvious inequity to certain individuals/groups within our Secondary Panel Supply Teachers.
• One thing we were told in a Teacher Liaison meeting with the Board on Dec 21st is that there may be new eschool software coming out in the spring, which may allow job shopping to be selective in nature. In other words, groups can determine if they truly want to use it or not, but that will ultimately be a Board decision.
• We, as your Union, will be analyzing its impact over the next while, including a survey, and will report on it continually in our upcoming newsletters.

   *Please peruse the instructions in your Board email so you are aware and are, more importantly, comfortable with its usage.