By Michael Scoular (The Cascade) – Email
Print Edition: June 4, 2014
In Abbotsford, teachers began to strike on an overcast Thursday — unlike past years, different districts demonstrate on a single day per week instead of eliminating an entire section of the school calendar.
Supportive honks and middle fingers were both on display from passing vehicles, and teachers characterized the feeling of this round of negotiations as “just as terrible” as previous strikes in 2006 and 2011, but “more confrontational,” referring to the lockout that has reduced salaries until an agreement is met, the rhetoric used by the Liberals, and how the new provincial budget plans to freeze education funding into 2017.
The school year ends this month carrying additional lockout details, not a deadline for a deal to be made.
The only news of progress in talks between the BC Teachers’ Federation (BCTF) and the BC Liberals came when the government backed down from its offer of a 10-year contract, instead proposing one that would last for six.
Everything since has been a public relations battle: both the BCTF and the BC Public Schools Employers’ Association (BCPSEA) sent their own sets of reasons to the press and parents in the form of informative Q&As, some teachers have detailed their time-constrained, understaffed classroom experiences on blogs, and responses have gone out to those social media-shared posts, returning to lockout language that contextualizes teachers’ inability to give adequate time to end-of-the-year plans as a choice not to work.
CBC reports that parents have taken over organization and supervision of a Vancouver-area track meet after strike schedules would have seen it cancelled. The Globe and Mail reports some students around the province are setting up their own form of public protest.
The amount of provisional preparation time given to teachers, unfavourably compared to other provinces, is a statistic the BCTF has cited as one of its many reasons for setting up picket lines, but on this count the public is less sympathetic.
One of the most prominent clashes of the current teacher-employer contract stalemate is over the ability to set class size and composition, a detail that was removed from the realm of negotiation in 2002 by the BC Liberals, which was deemed unconstitutional in 2011, and restored by the BC Supreme Court this January, a decision that was immediately appealed by the provincial government.
Parents and students have seen teachers take strike action multiple times in the intervening years, but from the teachers’ perspective, this has been one long dispute, one that may not reach a denouement until the appeal process finishes, which teachers do not expect to happen in the very near future.
Nicole Mauro, an elementary school teacher, has seen the past decade-plus of contention, and disagrees with the opposing view on class sizes.
“Class size matters hugely,” she says. “Especially when you have many special needs kids and high needs kids; particularly at our school, there’s not enough [teaching assistants]. We did have skills classes back [when current university students were in elementary grades], but those have all been phased out. So all those children are in a regular classroom with little to no support sometimes.”
Where class sizes matter differently, and where most of the emphasis of strike coverage has been focused, is in economic matters.
Teachers, who received their last wage increase as an outcome of the 2006 round of negotiations, are debating on considerably different terms than the provincial government. Where the BCTF’s offer includes a cost of living increase in addition to a wage hike, the Liberals do not want to set a new public-sector precedent, and so have offered about half of the union’s 10.75 per cent figure. The union talks of BC teachers’ middling-to-low rank among the provinces, while the province says the numbers (from $45,909 annually for new teachers out of a one-year teacher education program, to $81,489 to a post-grad teacher with 13+ years of experience) are comparable to income levels in this province.
When Christy Clark’s prediction-defeating provincial election win happened last year, it was on a platform of financial responsibility.
In a Vancouver Sun profile, speaking of her parents (her father, it has often been brought up, was a teacher), she said “I very much passionately believe that if Jim and Mavis Clark were here today, and you could ask them what that most important thing was that they would have liked to have seen their government do, it would be to say they wanted to make sure we didn’t have to labour under billions and billions of dollars worth of debt.”
Some critics have pointed to the wage increases Clark’s party voted in immediately after its win with hypocrisy implied, but the Liberal budget is balanced. What it requires of schools is a business model of education that has seen, by the BCTF’s count, over 200 public schools close since 2002 (this year’s headlines include four schools on Vancouver Island and a near-closure in Port Alberni, where the school district now needs to find over $800,000 in next year’s budget).
Based on communications with the BC Liberals, Mauro says part of the urgency and feeling of necessity of the current strike is the manner of how Clark’s government has dealt with the teacher’s union. “It’s a feeling of such disrespect,” she says.
The two lightning rods of debate in this bargaining season also have wide-reaching effects outside of the K-12 routine. In a 2012 survey of poverty in British Columbia, the BCTF’s first recommendation to the provincial government was similar to the ones being presented now: “Many teachers expressed concern about the inadequacy of resources to address learning gaps of ‘grey area’ students, many of whom are experiencing poverty. Teachers described the types of resources needed as: provide extra staffing resources such as specialist teachers for students in need of extra learning support, psychologists and counsellors to provide emotional support to students and families, speech language pathologists, early-intervention literacy programs, and educational assistants. Some teachers specifically recommended the government focus on improving classroom conditions so teachers can address diverse learning needs (staffing ratios, class size).”
As BC’s teacher strikes rotate through a second straight week in response to the provincial government’s lockout, the situation mirrors public opinion: divided and uncertain of any end to the conflict.
Abbotsford South MLA Darryl Plecas was contacted for an interview, but did not respond by press time.
