Woke Teachers’ Union

A Cautionary Tale

This is an anonymous post by a Canadian highschool teacher. Code named: Igor Stravinski

This is the story of how a small woke minority of members took control of a teachers’ union. In the teachers’ bargaining unit of OSSTF District 19 (Peel), Critical Race Theory has become the de-facto operating ideology. Anyone who dares to question this orthodoxy is ruthlessly bullied and harassed, called out as racist, and could even face discipline from the school board. Not surprisingly, few speak out. The Peel District School Board’s brazen Critical Race Theory indoctrination strategy goes ahead completely unchallenged.

This story begins when woke elements in the Peel community went on the attack against the Peel District School Board. That is a long and sordid tale in and of itself, but suffice it to say that they were wildly successful. Self-appointed “leaders”, they “disrupted” the board to the extent that it became completely dysfunctional. The Ministry appointed 3 woke people to conduct a review of the board, the results of which were really a foregone conclusion. The Board was declared to be incompetent and racist. The Director of Education, a moderate, and a number of other senior administrators were cut loose and given large hush money payments. The board was taken over by the Ministry of Education, and the woke community “leaders” essentially took control of the board. The elected trustees were sidelined, except 3 who were part of the woke movement. The senior administration has been completely cleansed of anyone who might object to DeAngelo/Kendi style “anti-racism”. Millions have been spent in severance pay and extended leaves of absence for principals and senior administrators. The replacements for these expelled administrators were hired for their woke zeal and orthodoxy and are not competent to do the jobs they are actually supposed to be doing. Student learning conditions are at an all time low. But I digress…

The PDSB review had essentially cast teachers (and school administrators) as racist and attributed the relatively poor achievement and higher rates of discipline of black male students (about 5% of the student population) to that. Unexplained was how, if their contention of white supremacy was true, other minority groups were even more successful than white kids. Of course, they did not provide any actual evidence to support their allegations. They relied on “lived experiences” of a few black students and parents (anecdotal evidence).

You would think that the union leaders would have defended their members’ reputation, pointing out that the review did not provide any empirical evidence to support teacher racism, was based on a relatively small number of anecdotal reports, and that in typical CRT fashion, the conclusions were considered self-evident. After all, the point of view of the reviewers and the woke crowd was that the lower outcomes in academic success of male black students and more frequent disciplinary action taken against them were in themselves proof of systemic racism. No other possible cause was even considered.

But the union leaders did nothing. They knew that there was a small but highly recalcitrant base of highly woke members who wanted the union to endorse the PSDB review and pledge to work alongside the board, under Ministry Supervision, to implement its recommendations. These woke union members wanted nothing less than a woke revolution among teachers and their union. But most members were highly skeptical, and with good reason.

The ringleader of this merry band was Ashoak Grewal, brother of notorious PDSB Associate Director Poleen Grewal. Poleen, ever the opportunist, had joined forces with the community “leaders” and took the knives to PDSB director Peter Joshua just as he was about to fire her. In fact both Ashoak and Poleen were opportunists- bullies who were looking to take power and create opportunities for themselves and their friends and family. Poleen had been found guilty of using her position as AD to bully teachers into giving her son marks of 100% in three courses. She was widely reported by insiders to leak interview questions to favoured applicants for senior positions. She was said to groom them so when they were hired they would give her their absolute loyalty. Peter Joshua had her investigated (see the Mcnair Report)

Mcnair Report (1)

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and was going to fire her when she filed a human rights complaint against him (they are both South Asian) as a stalling tactic. It worked. Joshua was removed by the MOE appointed supervisor and Poleen kept her job until September 2021 when she “went on leave” for two years. She will be paid her full AD salary and then retire, most likely.

By the spring of 2020, Ashoak and his followers started demanding that the union leaders do something about the supposed racist problem within their union ranks. He pointed to the preponderance of white people on the bargaining unit executive as “proof” of union racism. They wanted to “woke up” the bargaining unit – the usual calls to “dismantle racist and colonial structures and eradicate white supremacy” etc. etc. What that actually means, of course, is establishing a race-based system in which members are categorized as either “oppressors” or “the oppressed”. The oppressors were white people, especially males. Throw in sex, gender, sexual orientation, etc. and you end up with an inscrutable and jumbled identity-based hierarchy of oppression.

Obviously this kind of divisiveness is the antithesis of unionism. The unions had been fighting for equality of all members for decades, very successfully. All members of the bargaining unit enjoy the same salary and benefits as well as the same protections and support regardless of their race, creed, gender, etc. etc. The woke members were not revolting because their legitimate complaints of racism were being ignored. They were upset that the union leadership was not gung ho to join the woke bandwagon being lead by the PDSB. Those union leaders knew going down the woke road was just not something that most members would support, so they understandably balked. The woke gang responded by initiating a vicious social media attack against the union leaders with the support of the community group that had brought down Peter Joshua, and staged a kind of a coup.

On June 16th 2020, Ashoak and his gang of woke warriors showed up to the OSSTF District 19 Annual General Meeting demanding that there be a time released officer on the District executive in charge of “equity”. But he and his followers, like most members, to be fair, were not at all engaged in their union and knew nothing about how it was structured or functioned. They had showed up to the wrong meeting! The District executive was made up of members of the executives of the three bargaining units that make up the district. Executive officers are elected by the bargaining units and the Teachers Bargaining Unit AGM had already taken place on May 28th. This date had been on the calendar for a year and advertised widely but Ashoak and his gang really did not care about the union, whom they viewed as an obstacle to the Board’s ill-conceived equity initiatives, so they did not read any of the communication from their bargaining unit hence the comical mix-up.

The woke crowd did not react well to being told that they had showed up to the wrong meeting and missed their opportunity to present amendments to the unit constitution. They let loose with the usual cries of racism white supremacy. Although they had made fools of themselves, they were treated respectfully and another TBU general meeting was scheduled. It took place on June 24th.

At that meeting, the woke revolutionaries showed up in force. They were able to marshal over 200 members (out of about 2800) to come to the virtual event. This was only about 7% of the membership but a very strong turnout for a union meeting (a sad comment). So those in attendance were mostly gullible and guilt-ridden white members who the woke gang had convinced that the bargaining unit was racist. That was not hard- most members are disengaged with the union and mistrustful of union leaders after years of ineffective contract negotiations had resulted in deflated salaries and diminished benefits, along with badly eroded working conditions.

To the shock of the union leaders, this time the woke gang showed up with constitutional amendments to create not one, but three new time-released officers to do “anti-racism” work. According to the unit constitution, amendments must be circulated among the general membership 4 days prior to the meeting. Since this was not done, the threshold for the amendments to carry was 90% of those present rather than the usual 2/3rds. There was not a lot of debate, because anyone who spoke against the motions was attacked. People knew that anyone who spoke up in opposition risked being viciously attacked on social media and might face discipline from the school board. Someone asked how the salaries of these new officers would be paid. The cost estimate was $400 000 and the budget had already been passed at the AGM in May and there was no surplus.

The response to that question would have been comical had it not been for the gravity of the situation. It was suggested that the employer should pay. This is an employer who is notorious for nickel and diming in negotiations. Someone else suggested that the provincial union leaders should find the money. But the provincial budget is passed at the annual meeting of the provincial assembly by delegates from all bargaining units and that meeting had been held in March. No money there either.

This is where the provincial union officers could have stepped up to stop the train wreck that was about to unfold. The meeting speaker was brought in from provincial office and it was her duty to determine that any motions put on the floor for consideration were in order. It was longstanding practice that cost motions were not in order unless there was sufficient funding to support them. But the motions brought by the woke members were ruled to be in order even though passing them would result in a budget deficit of $400 000 which was 45% of the total unit budget!!! Not surprisingly, the motion did not get the needed 90% of votes to carry. The vote count was at about 83%- pretty darn close to passing, based on the fact that out of 2800 members only about 300 had attended the meeting since no one knew triggering a 10% dues increase to woke up the unit was going to be on the floor. But did the woke concede defeat? Of course not! They are not at all interested in democratic process, which is a “colonial structure” (so is the human rights code, but don’t go there with them).

The woke complained about voting irregularities. The voting had been done through Zoom as this was a virtual meeting. A few people claimed they were not able to vote. So the chair of the meeting, the woman from provincial office, agreed to allow a person by person public vote over Zoom. Each member was called out, one by one, to express their vote. The original zoom vote was anonymous.

This process took several hours (the meeting was scheduled for 2 hours), during which time many members had to leave for personal reasons and never got to vote, meanwhile the woke went to social media and got more members, or at least people claiming to be members, to join the meeting and vote. People who had voted “no” initially and were afraid of being attacked if identified as a “no” vote also left the meeting. It was a farce! In the end, the woke got the 90% vote they needed and the motions carried. Nevertheless, executive members who voted no were hounded on social media and elsewhere afterwards. Many of them resigned. The provincial organization did nothing to protect them.

The local bargaining unit had been hung out to dry by the provincial leaders. Those provincial officers could not stomach the optics of doing anything to impede “anti-racism” having been relentlessly roasted for being racist themselves for months by the small but well-organized woke crowd. They created a local crisis and then just walked away.

The local leaders were left with four unpalatable options

Resign, and allow the provincial executive to take control of the unit. That would have been the end of the road for the union careers of the local leadership so this was a non-starter. Anyway, it was a black hole that no one want to enter.

Call another general meeting, this time well-advertised, and try to amend the new motions to reduce the number of time-released ABR officers to one, resulting in a more palatable levy increase of about 100% (about a 3% increase in overall dues). This option was fraught with all kinds of potential land mines and was seen as a lose-lose proposition so was never seriously considered.

Call another general meeting and propose a new levy to cover the $400 000 budget increase: This would more than triple the current union levy (about a 10% increase in overall dues) and was sure to be very unpopular. It was not clear that it would pass. Even if the levy motion carried at the meeting, the membership would be badly divided. If it failed, the woke crowd would have “proof” of the racism of the bargaining unit, when in fact the membership had simply refused to pay an exorbitant dues increase with no proof that the money spent would eliminate racism. Not to mention that no evidence had ever been provided to prove that there actually was any particular anti-black racism problem in the bargaining unit in the first place! This too seemed like a no-win proposition.

Pay the $400 000 out of the unit’s reserve funds. The bargaining unit had reserves of about $1.2 million. This is an emergency fund and was never intended to be used for basic unit operating expenses. This was deemed to be the most viable option, and at a meeting of the TBU council, the governing body of the unit made up of the unit executive and branch Presidents (leaders elected at each school), the motion to do this, for one year only, carried. People just wanted to get on with letting the woke crowd in, hoping that would calm things down. It didn’t.

Caving in to the woke was a big mistake. They will never be satisfied because they believe in white supremacy so “the work” is never done. They did not need any evidence to conclude the union was racist, so they certainly would not listen to anyone who suggested that there be some kind of objective success criteria to indicate when “the work” was finished. The unit was looking at paying this budget increase of over 30% indefinitely. At the TBU AGM in may of 2021, a motion to increase union dues by 10% passed. Although this increased levy must be approved annually, it is unlikely anyone will have the courage to oppose it in future years given the viscous personal attacks on them that would surely ensue.

The new officers were appointed by a committee of a handful of woke members so answered to no one. Now full time, fully paid union executive officers, they have been using their abundance of time and resources (they demanded and received thousands in discretionary funds) to pursue their own personal woke agenda, promoting the woke goals of the PDSB over the interests of their own teacher members. They are closely connected, through Ashoak, to the PDSB director’s office and if they do not get what they want from the union executive they threaten to file a human rights complaint with the PDSB- the employer, and get the executive members written up with a letter of discipline from corrupt Poleen Grewal’s woke successors. The woke have succeeded in seriously eroding the union’s ability to stand up to the school board. And remember, the school board is no longer under the control of the democratically elected trustees- it is under the direct control of the Minister of Education. Basically the government was now able to pursue its agenda without much opposition from the union.

This is union busting. Were the woke aware they were being used as a tool to bust their own union? Probably most of them weren’t. But nevertheless, that is what happened. When the government eventually abandons them, who will they go crying to? The very union they helped to bust! That is, if it still exists.

Organizations everywhere are being woken up. Opportunistic and unscrupulous people can see It concentrates power into the hands of a few who do not answer to anyone outside that group. They become the high priests of a new religion and are the harbingers of a new form of authoritarianism that is taking hold in western societies. Winston Churchill once said something to the effect that democracy is the worst form of government except all the rest. Woke authoritarianism is one of the rest. This needs to be resisted.

-Igor Stravinski

This posts compliments the Peel District School Board and White Supremacy article that also details the woke takeover of the PDSB. These two pieces, when taken together, paint a picture of extreme and obvious woke ideological entrenchment throughout the PDSB and its corresponding union.