Good. Bad. Ugly. One Day in October.

I couldnt imagine a day that could start better: after three years of lobbying the board and anyone who would listen, we finally passed an official VSB recognition of International Walk to School Week (October 3-7 for those in less enlightened parts of the world :) as well as a determined effort at the board offices for district staff to also walk to school as it were. Theres nothing like setting the tone at the top.

But it didnt stop there. We also had a public event this morning attended by five other trustees, many of whom actually appeared to have walked to the event, PLUS through the active lobbying of a fantastic parent Translink voted to give FREE TRANSIT for all school-aged kids all week long. What more could a Green Party trustee possibly ask for? I bopped off to work from the morning event feeling pretty good.

After a pretty fulfilling four hours of work, I turned on the news at 1:30 only to hear it announced that Labour Minister Mike de Jong was planning legislative intervention in teacher contract bargaining within 40 minutes. Rumors had been flying all last week about this possibility but up until that moment, it seemed incredulous that the provincial government would once again spend months bargaining only to impose the very same contract they imposed, a contract made by ripping the guts and feathers out of years of teacher bargaining, only three years before.

Its bad enough watching this all from the perspective from a parent concerned about the stability of my own child's classroom and things from the world around that might impact that, but from the perspective of a trustee its been a nightmare: the government's ham-fisted bargaining stance is supposedly on our behalf. No, school trustees dont negotiate with teachers. Local bargaining was taken away by the last provincial government and not unpredictably no contract has been negotiated since then.

As you can imagine, when the people at the table dont have to live with the day to day consequences of playing chicken at the bargaining table, why come to an agreement? Its conditions in schools that suffer from bad labour relations (a place the provincial government doesnt spend much time in) and local boards that have to try and mend the wounds bad faith bargaining causes. Conversely, when local boards and unions do have to sit down together, agreements get reached. Weve bargained with all of our unions over the past three years under a zero cost mandate and its generally gone well, with agreements already signed with most including adult educators, the only teachers union we still have the authority to negotiate with.

By 2:30 it got worse. Not only had the government imposed the very same objectionable contract on teachers as they had in 2002 that caused so much division and strife, they also were rattling the bargaining structure sword with indications of a more dysfunctional bargaining system yet to come. Its hard to imagine what worse will look like when you translate the reality of such incredibly poor labour relations in classrooms. Maybe you can limp along with a crappy labour climate in the communications office of the Premier, lets say, but it sure doesnt work well when youve got staff working flat out juggling 30+ grade 5 kids in a classroom, all with diverse needs.
The day was capped off with a board meeting which, without Victorias intervention, would have been a pretty quiet meeting. As it was, we spend some extra time to re-iterate our support for a negotiated solution and talked about what form our input to a new labour commission on bargaining in education might look like (and in case that as yet to be named person is reading, I cant help but reiteratemaybe take a look at all those successful local contracts being negotiated by local boards with local unions).

Press releases issued from the board pleading for the government to bargain in good faith are available at: www.vsb.bc.ca

Going to bed tonight hoping that students, parents, teachers, support staff and principals have the patience to get through this bad-tasting era of provincial education policy. We are just nine people on the board but for the hundreds of thousands in the province who will live with the realities of the provincial approach to labour relations, its been a mighty long first month of school.

Comments

[peter hill]

Hi,
I'm a Vancouver teacher and I couldn't agree more with your comments on the government's ham- isted approach to this new contract.
I've just come from a day where teachers have been yelling at each other every chance they could get. "Should we walk out or not? I don't want to lose money etc."
The sad thing now is that teachers don't want to do any extra curricular actitiies for the kids. Sad but true, that's how Ontario teachers finally got the government to listen.
This is what Gordo has brought us to.
By the way, I make $13,000 less than my equivilant in Ontario and Alberta.

[Rick Dignard]

This is sad to say but things will have to get "ugly" if we are to see any improvment on the teachers front.The Liberals do not understand what "negotiate" means! I was on strike in the ferries dispute for four days, losing money and ready for war when we made the mistake of accepting arbitration from a guy working for the Liberals, Sinclar and Heyman where no help either just as with the hospital workers, we are dealing with bullies in three piece siuts, standing up to them will be tough but worth it.

[Charles Menzies]

Five days later the teachers are on a full scale strike. The courts have declared them to be in contempt. But theya re standing strong. Teachers are by nature, I think it fair to say, law abiding and considered people. The fact that about 91% of our public school teachers have voted to go out on strike until the key issues of class size, learning sport, and the right to enter into free and fair collective bargaining speaks volumes to the importance of this issue.

Here's to solidarity with our teachers.

Charles Menzies
U. Hill Sec. PAC member
www.npweblog.ca