British Columbia teachers enter sixth month of unique 'strike'
Members of the British Columbia Teachers' Federation began a strike on the day that school opened in September of 2011. But classes have gone on as normal, and that has continued into February 2012.
Teachers continue to teach, assess students and even voluntarily sponsor extra-curricular activities as they would if they were not on strike. And they continue to get their full pay because they are carrying out their teaching.
What they are not doing is any administrative work other than keeping attendance (for safety reasons). They do no supervision before or after school or during breaks during the day. The administrators have to do this work — everyone from the superintendent to the vice-principal. Teachers don't go to staff meetings or hold any meetings with school administrators, unless safety of the students is involved.
This form of strike exists because the BC government tried to eliminate teacher strikes by passing "essential service" legislation. This type of legislation is generally aimed at hospital or police or fire unions. It requires that essential services be maintained during a strike and has a process where the union and the employer negotiate with the Labour Relations Board what is essential and what levels of staffing are required to meet those. Other activities are not essential and the workers on strike don't have to do them. Those employees carrying out the essential service are paid as they have been under the collective agreement that has expired.
In the case of education, the parties agreed that teaching the students is what is essential, and the administrative aspects are not essential.
Report cards were determined not to be essential, so teachers did not produce report cards when the reporting period came up. The BCTF encouraged all teachers to be in contact and available to talk to parents about how their child is doing — just not based on letter grades. Some parents have said that it has produced more meaningful information about how their child is doing than report cards and letter grades.
In an effort to put teachers in a bad light, the Ministry of Education directed school principals to send home report cards, even though they had no grades on them, only attendance information. The tens of thousands of dollars it cost to do this made the Macleans' magazine list of stupid government expenditures and the Ministry said blank report cards won't be mailed home at the next reporting period if the strike is still on.
Negotiations between the BCTF and the BC Public Schools Employers' Association, the bargaining agency for school boards, have been taking place since the beginning of March of 2011. As of February 2012, more than 70 negotiating meetings have taken place — and not a single item has been signed off by the parties.
Teachers have sought to get provisions on class size and class composition into the collective agreement, as well as improve salaries and benefits to keep up with costs and inflation.
The Employers' Association were given direction by the provincial government that they could only agree to a "net zero." In other words, any gains would have to be cancelled out by taking away something else that cost that amount. The employer also demands the elimination of all the provisions of the collective agreement that provide fair processes for teaching assignments and seniority. They want to replace these by giving the principal the power to make all assignments based on their subjective judgement of "suitability." The principal would also be given the power to fire any teacher after one negative evaluation by the principal, again with no fair appeal procedures.
Needless to say, the union is not prepared to accept any of these employer demands. The union has put forward proposals for improvements, along with the evidence for their value. The employer says no to every item because they are not "net zero." Further, government policy is that the employer must have full flexibility to do as it wishes with teachers careers to fit its plans for changes in education. The Minister of Education has said from the beginning of negotiations in March of 2011 that the government might impose a contract by legislation. It was unlikely that teachers would agree to the employer demands for pay cuts (no increase to at least keep up to inflation) and the provisions that ensure fair processes for job assignments. And the government was signalling that it would not ever give anything that the union could agree to.
A back story is necessary to understand the context of this situation.
The BC government imposed contracts on teachers twice in the last decade.
When a right-wing government was elected in 2001, it immediately made a 25% cut in taxes. This provided an excuse then to make major cuts to health care and education by tearing up the contracts with the unions.
A contract was imposed on teachers that eliminated all the working conditions provisions for limits to class size and the number of students with special needs in a class, as well as staffing formulas for learning specialists for special needs, counselling and libraries. Government did this to eliminate 3000 teaching positions, about 10% of the teaching force. These working conditions had been negotiated into the collective agreement by teachers giving up salary increases over a period of years. With the "net zero" demand in 2012, teachers had nothing to give back to get salary increases because everything that might be traded off had already been arbitrarily stripped from the contract by legislation.
Teachers held a one-day strike in January of 2002 to protest the first government imposed contract, but that had no effect. Class sizes increased, hundreds of special needs, English Second Language teachers, counsellor and teacher-librarian positions were eliminated. Working and learning conditions have continued to get worse over the last decade.
In addition to the protest, the BCTF went to the courts. Its claim was that the stripping of the contract by legislation was a violation of the freedom of association provisions in Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
The government imposed an agreement again in 2005, this time before negotiations had even begun. This time teachers wouldn't take it anymore and walked out in a two-week strike. The strike was declared illegal and the courts prohibited the BCTF paying strike pay to its members or expending funds to support the strike.
However, teachers had parental and public support. Some regional sympathy strikes took place with workers in other unions, both public and private sector. The government finally brought in a mediator who created the framework for an agreement for a five year period that included both salary increases and government promises to bring in legislated limits on class size and class composition.
Ten years after legislation had ripped up the collective agreement in 2002, the BC Supreme Court finally ruled on whether the government had the right to do that. The decision was no. The legislation was declared to be not in effect because it violated rights provided in the Charter. However, the judge gave the government one year — to April 2012 — to remedy the situation rather than having the original collective agreement reinstated.
The court decision came down just days after bargaining for a new contract opened. Teachers felt that the court decision clearly provided that the rights to bargain working and learning conditions were restored. The government rejected that position and determined to take away more of the rights provided in the existing collective agreement.
The result has been days and days of meetings and negotiations, but with government not agreeing to even discuss proposals put forward by teachers. The government strategy seems to have been entirely aimed at the court. It wants to tell the judge that there have been extensive meetings and negotiations and they will claim this is all they have to do--not agree to anything--to meet workers' rights to collective bargaining. They hope the court will agree that it is OK to legislate rather than negotiate an agreement.
Meanwhile, education has been going on. The strike hasn't harmed the learning process. In fact, teachers report that they have more time to spend working with students and preparing for their teaching because they don't have forms to fill out, meetings with the administrators, hall supervision, the collecting of money and the many other interruptions that have come to characterize the reality of teachers' work.
Some teachers have said this is a strike they would like to stay on for the rest of their career. However, that is not a likely outcome.
