Rob Millard sees an irony in the timing of the provincial governments promise to impose a cooling off period in its negotiations with B.C.s teachers: Its anti-bullying day, he said, and were being bullied.
Millard, president of the West Vancouver Teachers Association, made the comment to the North Shore News Wednesday, a day after education minister George Abbott said his government was tabling a bill to suspend the unions strike action for six months and appoint a mediator to negotiate a deal within certain strict guidelines.
The move may sound reasonable on the surface, said Millard, but in reality its just a strong-arm tactic that will ultimately hurt students.
Teachers are pretty upset and pretty disappointed, he said.
Millards North Vancouver counterpart Daniel Storms was more emphatic.
Its appalling, he said. It doesnt befit a democratic society.
The legislation, dubbed Bill 22 or the Education Improvement Act, suspends even limited strike action until the end of August and eliminates questions of class size from negotiations for a year and a half. It also requires the mediator only to consider proposals involving no net increase in cost to the employer a condition the province has maintained throughout the current dispute.
The ministry announced it just an hour after the provinces Labour Relations Board ruled that teachers could legally walk off the job provided the union give two school days notice, and that it limit the action to three consecutive school days at first and then one school day in every five thereafter.
If passed, Bill 22 will nip the strike in the bud, rendering job action illegal and imposing hefty daily fines on any teachers who take part. Until that time, however, teachers are still allowed to walk off the job, and may do so if the union votes in favour of the plan.
Teachers on the North Shore and throughout the province were casting ballots Tuesday and Wednesday, with results to be announced Thursday. If they vote to go ahead, teachers could walk out of classrooms as early as Monday morning.
That appears likely given the reported mood of members in North and West Vancouver.
Theyre shocked, appalled, saddened, very angry, said Storms. (Theyre) feeling that the government just never intended to seriously address issues in the classroom.
Forcing a mediator only to consider proposals that assume no net cost increase or restrictions on class size guts the negotiations and swings the process wildly in the governments favour, he said. And the threat of fines $2,500 a day in his case, as a union officer, $475 a day for rank-and-file teachers is intended unfairly to intimidate, he added.
This befits a dictatorship, said Storms. I would suspect that the BCTF will consider a legal challenge to the constitutionality of this bill.
The rejection of caps on classroom size will impact students ability to learn immediately, said Millard, but the imposition of a contract could also hurt them in other ways over the long term if individual teachers start rolling back their involvement in extracurricular activities in protest.
They might start shutting down what they give in their voluntary time, he said. They might say: Why would I coach? The teachers are fed up after ten years; theres a lot of talk about that.
But the province defended the legislation as a reasonable and necessary step, pointing out that teachers might achieve some wage increase within the net-zero mandate by making trade-offs in other areas, and that although it eliminates rules on average class size for grades 4-12, it requires that teachers be compensated for taking more than 30 students in a class.
Also, the bill comes with a $165-million Learning Improvement Fund. That money, spread over three years, can be used to hire additional staff or for other purposes.
Taken together, these are significant gains that recognize the important
role and contribution of teachers," said Abbott in a release Tuesday. Using legislation to resolve stalled negotiations is never the preferred option, but we need to end the disruptive strike that's creating a strain in our schools and classrooms."
Bill 22 extends the previous collective agreement to the end of August, while mediation is underway.
Check back here for more.
Follow us on Twitter: @NorthShoreNews
