Vancouver Sun: Teachers settle at last minute for 16% over 5 years
Contract agreement just before midnight deadline means BCTF members will get $4,000-a-person signing bonus from province
The B.C. Teachers’ Federation has signed a tentative contract giving its members a 16-per-cent salary hike over five years and holding out promise of labour peace this fall in public schools.
The deal also includes an enhanced signing bonus of $4,000 a teacher.
“It’s not everything we wanted for our members, but it’s a significant step,” said BCTF president Jinny Sims.
Sims said she would have preferred a shorter deal, but added, “Sometimes you have to make compromises.”
The deal was announced late Friday night, just hours before the government’s offer of a signing bonus was due to expire.
The teachers, like other public sector union workers, were eligible for $3,700 bonus if they inked a new contract before their old deal expired at midnight, although teachers negotiated a larger bonus.
Sims said she would have liked to address teacher workload and class size and composition in a more significant way, but suggested the union will continue working for those improvements.
“There are many ways to effect change besides the negotiating table,” she said.
Teachers will vote in September throughout the province to ratify the tentative agreement. The BCTF executive will recommend they accept it.
Hugh Finlayson, chief executive officer of the B.C. Public School Employers’ Association, said he thinks it is a good agreement for teachers and taxpayers.
“I think this is a very, very positive move for public education,” he said. “There was a lot of goodwill expressed on both sides, and we have something that we be used to build a strong and effective relationship between the BCTF and ourselves.”
Before Friday’s deal, the union had been asking for a 19-per-cent wage hike over three years while the employer had countered with 10 per cent over four years.
Teachers had given their union a strike mandate, and job action had been expected in September. Last fall, the BCTF shut down schools for 10 days in an illegal strike.
The two sides hadn’t negotiated an agreement since provincial bargaining was introduced for the education sector more than a dozen years ago.
Earlier Friday, Sims played down the importance of the signing bonus, although it was obviously a significant factor in the last-minute push to reach a deal before the union’s contract expired.
“We really would like to get a settlement done by tonight because I think the students, the parents, the teachers — everybody — wants to have a sense of stability as they go into the fall,” she said outside negotiations at a downtown Vancouver hotel.
The main sticking point in the dispute was wages. The employers’ association, the bargaining agent for school boards, had said the BCTF proposal for a 19-per-cent salary increase and improved benefits would increase education costs by 38 per cent — or $2 billion — over three years. The union disputed that calculation but did not provide its own figures.
Before the settlement with teachers, B.C. Finance Minister Carole Taylor said a total of 136 agreements had been reached with public sector unions, covering 261,798 employees. The contracts, which extend to 2010, include settlements with support staff in all 69 school districts.
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