UNDERSTANDING YOUR BENEFITS
AN IMPORTANT COMPONENT OF YOUR COMPENSATION PACKAGE – AND A CRITICAL BARGAINING GOAL BY DEREK HULSE
members, this is a section in their agreement that is shrouded in mystery – and one they’re likely to skip when reviewing the entitle- ments in their collective agreement. But benefits are an important part of the
Y benefits funding.
A QUICK HISTORY OF ETFO BENEFITS
Prior 2014, ETFO members received ben- efits either through their school board or, in a few cases, through their ETFO local. As a result of provincial negotiations between ETFO, school board associations and the government, the responsibility of managing
34 ETFO VOICE | WINTER 2022
overall compensation package ETFO is ne- gotiating for you during the 2022 round of central bargaining, so it makes sense to be familiar with how benefits and bargaining intersect.
It’s time to master the mystery of our collective agreement
includes over a dozen pag- es of technical information about how the provincial benefits plan is funded and managed. For many ETFO
benefits for ETFO members was eventually transferred from individual school boards to the ETFO Employee Life and Health Trust (ETFO-ELHT). Other education sector unions (OSSTF, CUPE, OECTA, AEFO, etc.) also negotiated their own ELHTs in 2014.
What is the ETFO-ELHT?
Essentially, it is the independent entity that oversees benefits and administers the pool of money negotiated by ETFO for the sole purpose of providing eligible members with benefits. The government provides the nego- tiated amount of money to individual school boards each year. The school boards, in turn, are to contribute that money to the ETFO- ELHT to fund benefits for eligible members. There are two separate “plans” in the ETFO-ELHT: one contains benefits fund- ing for eligible ETFO teacher and long-term occasional teacher members, and the other holds the benefits funding for eligible ETFO education worker members. The ETFO-ELHT is managed by a Board
of Trustees that includes representatives from ETFO, the Ontario Public School
Boards’ Association and the government. The Board of Trustees is responsible for ensuring
the long-term viability of the
ETFO-ELHT. Its job is to analyze trends in benefits usage, think ahead and ensure there is adequate funding available for your benefits today, next year or ten years from now. This may sometimes mean that difficult decisions need to be made by the Board of Trustees to maintain the sustained health of the ETFO-ELHT. The ETFO-ELHT publishes an annual re-
port that provides information on the finan- cial position of the plan. The annual report can be found on the ETFO-ELHT website at
etfo-elhtbenefits.ca.
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