Fact-finder to study teachers’ dispute
By ROD MICKLEBURGH
Tuesday, September 20, 2005 Page S3
With a report from Canadian Press.
VANCOUVER — With job action looming by the province’s 42,000 public school teachers, Labour Minister Mike de Jong stepped into the escalating dispute yesterday to try to avert a showdown on the picket line.
On the eve of a teachers’ strike vote, Mr. de Jong appointed associate minister Rick Connolly to investigate the impasse and report back to him on possible solutions by the end of the month.
However, the minister said he is not optimistic that a voluntary settlement is possible between the B.C. Teachers’ Federation and the province’s school boards, represented by the B.C. Public School Employers’ Association.
“The last contract expired more than a year ago, and it is clear that there are very different viewpoints on what is preventing a settlement,” Mr. de Jong said.
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BCTF president Jinny Sims said she welcomed the appointment of Mr. Connolly and pledged to “work hard” to negotiate a new contract without job action.
The union plans to meet the government’s so-called fact-finder as early as this morning, but that won’t have an impact on the BCTF’s strike vote, which is scheduled to begin today, Ms. Sims said.
Trustee CEO Hugh Finlayson said Mr. Connolly’s involvement improves the chances of a negotiated settlement.
The two sides have been locked in a war of words since contract talks broke down last week.
Trustees accused the teachers of demanding an annual increase of 35 per cent, outraging BCTF leaders, who said they have not yet tabled a specific wage package.
The situation is complicated by the fact that teachers are facing an employer with almost nothing to offer.
The government has already announced that teachers are covered by a two-year wage freeze imposed on other government employees. And there is a legislated ban on negotiating working conditions, such as class size.
Teachers are expected to overwhelmingly endorse the BCTF’s request for a strike mandate.
But the extent of their as-yet-unknown plan for job action is limited by the province’s essential-services legislation, which includes education.
Teacher and trustee representatives are at the B.C. Labour Relations Board this week to determine what services must be maintained in the event of a strike.
Trustees have argued that teachers should not be permitted to disrupt classes more than one day a week.
The current stalemate is nothing new in the parties’ troubled history of bargaining, which began when the then-NDP government brought in provincewide negotiations in 1993.
In each subsequent round of bargaining, the government has had to legislate a new collective agreement.
“History would suggest that negotiations . . . have never led to a solution. But maybe we can break that mould,” Mr. de Jong told reporters in Victoria.
A government-commissioned report by former deputy education minister Don Wright found that the two sides have a dysfunctional bargaining relationship, in part because there is little incentive on either side to settle.
Although teachers technically have the right to strike, public, political and editorial board hysteria over the possibility of any classroom disruption, however limited, has effectively removed that weapon from the union’s arsenal.
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