By Brendan Sweeney

The labour relations environment in Ontario's education sector 1 is both fascinating and dynamic. The late 1970s and 1980s marked a period of relative stability. Conversely, the 1990s were marked by turnover in provincial government, legislatives changes, new policy initiatives, and labour disputes. Not surprisingly, these phenomena dramatically impacted the working relationships between teachers, school administrators, 2 school board staff, educational support workers, and school trustees. A series of new initiatives in the past decade reduced the incidence of labour disruptions significantly and provided some stability, and there is still progress to be made. What is apparent amidst this contextual background is the importance of labour relations to the education sector. Accordingly, this report outlines the key components of the IRC's Education-Labour Relations in Ontario research initiative.

Included in this report is a summary of research activities, an overview of key areas of inquiry, and an initial discussion of customized professional development for education sector practitioners. The aims of this initiative are threefold. The first aim is to better understand the impacts of systemic and structural factors on labour relations. These factors include collective bargaining practices, policy changes, and labour markets for teachers, school administrators, and support workers. The second aim is to gain insight into the particularities of the labour relations environments in individual schools and school boards, thereby enabling a better understanding of the interplay between systemic and structural factors and those factors that are more localized, producing unique labour relations environments with their own successes and challenges. The third aim is to develop labour relations courses that are customized to meet the professional development needs of a variety of practitioners in the education sector.

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