While the BC Teachers’ Federation (BCTF) did not get near what it was looking for in its latest clash for the province’s classrooms, what it did gain is historic: a negotiated six-year contract, the longest yet in its embattled relationship with the provincial government.
Words like “dysfunctional” and “tortured” have been used to describe the relationship that goes back 40 years, regardless of the government’s political stripes.
What should come as a surprise is that this contract dispute ended with both sides working together to compromise.
Since 1987 there have been 52 strikes, a series of controversial bills, bitter court battles and only a single contract signed without either the teachers holding a strike or the provincial government legislating them back to work.
In 1987, Social Credit Party Premier Bill Vander Zalm and his cabinet were forced to allow teachers to bargain collectively after the union won a decisive court battle, labour rights they had been fighting for since the 1970s.
For the next six years, the BCTF operated as a federation of 75 individual unions, one in each school district. Each local union negotiated with its local school board with the province’s finances to fund the agreements.
The BCTF had a string of successes during that period including having union-led directions on class size and composition included in its collective agreement.
In 1994, BC Public School Employers’ Association was created and teacher bargaining was centralized.
In 1995, when a deal could not be agreed on, the contract was extended to 1998. As attempts at a second agreement failed, the New Democratic Party government legislated the teachers back to work.
The relationship further worsened in 2002 when Premier Gordon Campbell legislated the teachers back to work and removed class size and composition language from the teachers’ collective agreement.
In 2005, the teachers launched an illegal strike after they were legislated back to work for the third time in a row.
The BCTF contested the 2002 stripping of the contract language and in 2011 the union won the battle to have that language restored. In 2014 the teachers won another case on the same legislation. The government has appealed and is waiting on the decision expected this fall.
So even though the teachers did not get exactly what they wanted in terms of funding for public education, this latest job action has developed a promising first step.
