by Cathy Fisher If you can believe everything you see and hear in the media, efforts to resolve the labour dispute between BC’s teachers and government have ground to a halt. That is not the case.
It is important to know that Vince Ready is still engaged with this dispute, although he has stepped away at the moment. This is a tactic that mediators including Ready use to intensify pressure on both sides when a dispute has reached impasse. He and Jim Iker are still in contact. He has not “booked out” for good.
The BC Teachers’ Federation’s (BCTF) bargaining team hasn’t walked away from the table. They were ready, willing and able to bargain throughout the Labour Day weekend and are calling upon government to rethink its position and get back to the serious work of bargaining so a deal can be reached quickly.
One of the major stumbling blocks appears to be government’s attempt to make an end run around any court decision coming out of its multimillion-dollar appeal of two court rulings.
BC Public School Employers’ Association’s (BCPSEA) proposal E81 would have allowed either party to unilaterally terminate the collective agreement if they did not like the outcome of the court decision. That proposal has been removed by the employer, which is good.
However, its proposal E80 is still on the table, and government is insisting that it stay there. E80’s language, according to government’s bargaining team, would replace any and all language around class size and class composition that teachers might win back through the courts. BCPSEA wants to negate the court win before it even happens. It is important to remember that the government has lost two court cases on this issue and the judge in those decisions clearly said that it had not bargained in good faith. Rather, it had purposefully pushed teachers to strike.
Because of the media blackout during negotiations, there is a lot of information not getting to the general public. The minister of education, Peter Fassbender, doesn’t seem to feel bound by the blackout and unfortunately is spreading misinformation. When the BCTF respects the blackout, the public is left thinking that Fassbender speaks the truth.
For example, the general public does not know that when BCPSEA and the government talk about the BCTF’s benefits package, they are including things like education assistants, special education teachers, teacher librarians, class size and class composition. Those are clearly not items that anyone would ever consider to be a “benefit.” Benefits are things like medical, dental and extended health coverage. Nobody would expect their working conditions or support for their “clients” to be a benefit.
If you support public education, please do what you can to help bring this dispute to a fair and speedy resolution. You can phone or write our local school trustees, our MLA Nicholas Simons, Premier Christy Clark or Fassbender and urge them to get meaningful negotiations happening immediately.
Cathy Fisher is president of Powell River and District Teachers’ Association.
