Finance Minister Mike de Jong says the provincial government will not impose a settlement on the British Columbia Teachers Federation (BCTF) if no contract is signed by this fall.
History proves imposed settlements have not worked, and every other sector of the public service has been able to negotiate an agreement, he notes.
“What is it about this one area, and is it the expectation the government will step up and simply legislate an agreement? I hope that’s not the expectation because that’s not the plan.”
Cariboo-Chilcotin teachers’ Association president Murray Helmer says that insinuation holds no water.
“It was always our intention to have a negotiated settlement at the bargaining table.
“Legislated settlements in the past have not worked in our favour; that’s the reason why we lost class size and composition language [in 2002]….”
Government’s pointing to its refusal to legislate an end to the strike seems to be “a deflection” to steer public attention away from the
bargaining table and onto teachers, he adds.
“It switches the whole context away from the table. This could be negotiated tomorrow if they arrived at the table willing to get away from the original position that they brought back in March. They haven’t moved at all from that.”
Education Minister Peter Fassbender said the B.C. Liberal government wants to see a negotiated agreement, but remains firm in its commitment to balance the budget and deal fairly with all of B.C.’s 300,000 public sector workers.
“Unfortunately, the BCTF executive would not commit to mediating a total compensation package that would fall in the same affordability zone as the other public sector agreements reached to date.”
The teachers’ union demands include increases to preparation time, pregnancy leave, extended health care and substitute teacher compensation that add up to an additional $225 million a year, Fassbender explains.
However, Helmer says the prime focus of the provincial ministers involved seems to be preventing any blame for the failure to successfully bargain from landing on government.
“They don’t want a legislated deal and they don’t want to negotiate one, either. I think they just simply don’t want a deal.”
Only wages apply in the “me too” clause for reopening other public sector union contracts when another one settles for more money, so this pokes holes in Fassbender’s argument also, Helmer explains.
“He’s making it sound like our wage demand is the problem. Our wage demand is smaller than what CUPE [Canadian Union of Public Employees] has settled for; it’s certainly in line with other public sector unions.”
Helmer notes the BCTF has submitted two packages with reduced demands while government “sat with the exact same package” each time.
“We have just begun ‘bargaining with ourselves’ at this point. We come back to the table and government says ‘no you haven’t dropped enough, go away and drop some more off’.”
He says the BCTF is asking for a larger lump-sum payment than offered by government in lieu of the “substantially” more costly past grievances, which it would then agree to forfeit.
Helmer notes those grievances are numerous, date back to the imposed contract in 2002 and were deemed by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional in 2011.
“But, they’ve made it clear they have no intention of abiding by the Chief Justice’s ruling; they say they don’t agree with it so they don’t have to follow it. It’s just a snub of the court system.
“But, the grievance process is going to be an onerous process and a time-consuming process going back 12 years and adjusting and compensating on an individual basis.”
The bottom line is that government wants “absolutely no mention” of class size and composition in the collective agreement, he explains.
“[We] hold to our guns in saying that this is the key to making sure that our education system addresses the needs of students. We are not leaving that goal of ours that is so key to everything we do every day in the classroom.”
