Vancouver Sun:
BC Labour Federation urges mass protest; Union workers urged to support teachers by shutting down Victoria on Monday”
The B.C. Federation of Labour is urging thousands of unionized employees to walk off their jobs Monday morning and join in a coordinated shutdown of the City of Victoria in support of the province’s striking public school teachers.
Teachers, employers haggle over ruling; Court-appointed assets monitor seeks clarification from judge”
A B.C. Supreme Court judge who put a 30-day freeze on the assets of the B.C. Teachers’ Federation said Friday the union is barred from using “all [of its] assets” to help conduct the continuing illegal strike by teachers.
Teachers should know there is an iron fist inside this glove
There’s no question B.C. Supreme Court Judge Brenda Brown created a novel solution to the teachers’ dispute — stripping their duly elected leadership of its power and the membership of a chance to return to work and save their collective bank account.
Sims: Political prowess, steely resolve
Jinny Sims seems an unlikely candidate to face down the provincial government and the wrath of the courts over an illegal strike by teachers.
Brown: Judge in teachers ruling “one of better” benchers
B.C. Supreme Court Justice Brenda Brown, who crafted the contempt-of-court decision this week against the B.C. Teachers’ Federation, was known as an excellent litigator during her years as a courtroom lawyer.
The Globe and Mail
BC unions discuss Monday walkout
B.C. labour leaders planned to meet Sunday to decide whether public and private-sector union members in the Victoria area would walk off the job Monday in support of the province’s striking teachers.
B.C. Fed urges mass protest
Union workers urged to support teachers by shutting down Victoria on Monday
Darah Hansen
Vancouver Sun; with files from Maurice Bridge and Jonathon Fowlie, Vancouver Sun, and Canadian Press
Saturday, October 15, 2005
CREDIT: Ward Perrin, Vancouver Sun
Students show support for teachers at Broadway and Granville.
The B.C. Federation of Labour is urging thousands of unionized employees to walk off their jobs Monday morning and join in a coordinated shutdown of the City of Victoria in support of the province’s striking public school teachers. To listen to story, click link: here.
“This is our chance to tell the government that it’s not just teachers they’re dealing with now, it’s the rest of the labour movement who will also be taking action,” federation president Jim Sinclair said Friday at a news conference where he was flanked by the presidents of 15 public and private-sector labour organizations.
Sinclair said he expects thousands of union members to join him in the day of protest, which will start Monday with a march in the capital at 11 a.m., followed by a gathering at the legislature at 1 p.m. in time for the first sitting of the legislature since teachers went on strike Oct. 7.
The move could affect transit and and other public sector services in Victoria, such as liquor stores, government services, restaurants and hotels and post-secondary institutions. However, the unions have agreed that any patient-care services will not be affected, as well as B.C. Ferries and provincial corrections facilities.
Sinclair said the Monday events are just phase one in a larger plan by labour aimed at persuading the government to sit down and negotiate a contract settlement with teachers.
He promised escalated job action, possibly a province-wide general strike, should Monday’s protest fail to gain the government’s attention.
“I don’t rule anything out in terms of where we go from here,” Sinclair said.
Barring a surprise weekend settlement, schools will remain closed Monday.
Labour Minister Mike de Jong responded Friday afternoon by saying leaving work to attend the protest would be a risky move for public sector employees. While the government won’t be seeking a court injunction to stop the demonstration, he said, workers in Victoria who walk off the job to join the rally could be disciplined under the Labour Code.
“I think it is troubling to see other organizations wanting to, and apparently on the verge of, linking themselves and their members to behaviour that has already been characterized as illegal — that is continuing in defiance of the two court orders, de Jong said.
The strike by B.C.’s 42,000 public school teachers was ruled illegal by the B.C. Supreme Court at a special hearing Sunday. On Thursday, the court froze the assets of the teachers’ union for 30 days in punishment for their continued picketing. The ruling means teachers won’t get their $50-a-day strike pay.
Teachers, meanwhile, said the court’s ruling won’t affect their resolve to remain on the picket line.
At a union rally Friday morning at Chief Maquinna elementary school in East Vancouver, teacher Millie Saunders said teachers are standing firm.
“We will stand strong, we will stand together and we will hopefully achieve some of our goals,” she said.
Darcy Olson, a teacher at Vancouver Technical secondary, agreed.
“We need to get back to the bargaining table. The premier must come forward with strength and resolve to see this through — negotiated, not legislated,” she said in reference to a contract settlement.
Jinny Sims, president of the B.C. Teachers’ Federation, said Friday that teachers are grateful for the show of solidarity from other unions in the province and vowed that the strike will continue until a contract settlement is reached.
Sims said she hoped a meeting would take place with de Jong over the weekend, in time for school to resume Monday.
“Mr. de Jong, let’s talk over the weekend. This is a window of opportunity, let’s seize it so our students can be back in the classrooms and our teachers teaching,” she said.
De Jong said he, too, was willing to negotiate this weekend, but not while the teachers continued to violate the B.C. Supreme Court order.
“I and the government are available 24/7 to meet with members of the union, today, this weekend, and we attach one . . . condition — they must abide by the law. I want [the teachers] to commit to go back to work and stand down from their illegal action,” he said in a meeting with The Vancouver Sun’s editorial board Friday afternoon.
“I’m not, in my view, even able to engage in some sort of conditional discussion at a time when the Supreme Court of B.C. has made it clear unequivocally what the first step in this process needs to be,” de Jong said.
Hoisting signs reading “We take education seriously” and “Take a stand 4 education,” about 200 Vancouver students made their opinions known Friday at a raucous rally at the intersection of Granville and Broadway.
“The government is clearly showing its contempt and lack of concern for the teachers, for the students and for the people of Vancouver,” said Ian Thomas, a Grade 12 student at Sir Winston Churchill secondary.
“Teachers . . . are the people who are best to acquainted with the problems students face and they have hardly any say at all into the situation. It’s criminal and the teachers have every right to strike opposing this. They are taking a bullet for the students,” Thomas said.
“I’m going to continue to support the teachers while they remain out on strike so that they can get a good settlement, even if this goes on for a few weeks,” said Kirstin Johnson, a Grade 10 student at Kitsilano secondary.
“I have classes with 37 people in them and it’s ridiculous to think these are good conditions to be learning in and that these are acceptable conditions for teachers to be teaching in,” said Sasha Langford, a Grade 11 student at Kitsilano.
Langford said she’s concerned about losing school time if the strike continues, “but I think an issue that is more important is that when we are in school, the conditions aren’t good for us.”
Before going back to work, teachers want to negotiate a contract that includes a 15 per cent wage increase over three years, guarantees of smaller class sizes and more support for special needs students.
B.C. teachers are the third highest paid in Canada.
Education Minister Shirley Bond has said the average teacher starting salary is about $42,000 a year.
dahansen@png.canwest.com
PROTEST PARTICIPANTS
The B.C. Federation of Labour is promising a day of protest Monday that could shut down the city of Victoria. At least 15 public and private-sector unions were on hand Friday to back the federation in its move. They include:
– Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada
– Canadian Auto Workers Union
– International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers
– B.C. Government and Service Employees’ Union
– Hospital Employees’ Union
– Canadian Union of Public Employees of B.C.
– Federation of Post Secondary Educators
– Union of Needletrades, Textiles and Industrial Employees and Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International (UNITE HERE!)
– Canadian Office and Profession Employees’ Union
– Health Sciences Association
– Telecommunications Workers’ Union
– B.C. Building Trades
– B.C. Forum, a province-wide organization for retired union members
– B.C. Nurses’ Union
Ran with fact box “Protest Participants”, which has beenappended to the end of the story. Also See: Time to talk: editorial,C6; Debate of court ruling, A11; Black-belt teachers’ boss, A11.
© The Vancouver Sun 2005
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Sunday » October 16 » 2005
Teachers, employers haggle over ruling
Court-appointed assets monitor seeks clarification from judge
Jonathan Fowlie and Maurice Bridge
Vancouver Sun
Saturday, October 15, 2005
A B.C. Supreme Court judge who put a 30-day freeze on the assets of the B.C. Teachers’ Federation said Friday the union is barred from using “all [of its] assets” to help conduct the continuing illegal strike by teachers.
But the attempt by Justice Brenda Brown to clarify her initial ruling left the BCTF and the B.C. Public Schools Employers’ Association still wrangling over just what she meant.
“With respect to the prohibition on the union using its assets, those are all the assets of the union,” Brown said in a late-afternoon session, adding the order extends beyond just the BCTF to all of its union locals.
The attempt at clarification came at the request of court-appointed monitor Larry Prentice, and followed a day filled with arguments over what Brown meant when she ruled Thursday.
Brown put a freeze on the union’s assets, prohibiting it from paying its members for picketing, and enjoining the BCTF from “using its books, records and office to permit third parties to facilitate continuing breach of the court order.”
Provincial Labour Minister Mike de Jong hailed the ruling, and said it meant the union could not “use any of its assets — including its office, faxes and websites — to further this illegal activity.”
But Friday, BCTF president Jinny Sims disagreed.
Sims confirmed striking teachers would not receive their $50 daily strike pay, but maintained that it would otherwise be business as usual. “I don’t think there’s a court order to say we can’t use our phones and our faxes,” she said. “That’s just Mike de Jong’s version of what he thinks the court order means.”
Brown’s late-afternoon ruling Friday did not appear to clear up that discrepancy in the views of the two sides.
“What the court order means is that the BCTF cannot use any assets, whether they are financial, building, phone, fax,” said Michael Hancock, in-house counsel for the employers’ association, which bargains for B.C.’s 60 school boards.
“They cannot use any of those assets, nor can any of its locals use any of those sorts of assets, to facilitate a continuing breach of the court order,” he told reporters.
Sebastian Anderson, counsel for the BCTF, disagreed noting that Brown had not been specific in establishing rules governing the use of specific assets, and that she instead had ruled that the court would deal with questions of potential breaches as they were raised.
“She said that if it [specific use of fax machines, phones and other items] became a matter later on she’d consider that in terms of what the penalty would be,” Anderson told reporters outside the court.
Hancock added the employers’ association will be asking for the penalty phase — where fines or other penalties may be imposed — to “happen as soon as possible. No date has so far been set.
Meanwhile, the Federation of Post-Secondary Educators of B.C., which has 10,000 members provincewide, announced Friday it has set aside an initial commitment of $200,000 to a “Feed the Teachers Fund” to buy food vouchers.
FPSE president Cindy Oliver said it was clear the provincial government was hoping to starve the teachers into submission.
“The teachers are making nothing right now, and certainly our members did not want to see any teachers going hungry because of their struggle for a fairly negotiated collective agreement,” she said.
Oliver said the FPSE action does not constitute defiance of the court order.
“We believe this is respectful of the court order,” she said. “People can drop off coffee and doughnuts to a picket line, and we’re just dropping off $50- vouchers and helping the teachers feed their families.”
Oliver added the FPSE is appealing to its national organization, the Canadian Association of University Teachers, as well as to the B.C. labour movement, for additional support for its food-voucher initiative.
jfowlie@png.canwest.com
mbridge @png.canwest.com
© The Vancouver Sun 2005
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Teachers should know there’s an iron fist inside this glove
Ian Mulgrew
Vancouver Sun
Saturday, October 15, 2005
There’s no question B.C. Supreme Court Judge Brenda Brown created a novel solution to the teachers’ dispute — stripping their duly elected leadership of its power and the membership of a chance to return to work and save their collective bank account.
We’ve seen unions slapped with huge fines, we’ve seen union leaders jailed for disobeying court orders unilaterally ending labour disputes.
In this case, Brown has ordered all the union’s bank accounts, assets and subsidiary business entities monitored for 30 days to ensure none of its resources are used to help sustain the illegal walkout.
Most people in the labour world were gobsmacked at what was generally described as an innovative, brilliant, unprecedented, historic, sophisticated decision.
We’ll see.
Though such a ruling is unprecedented in labour law, it’s the kind of approach you often see in bankruptcy cases, which was a big part of Brown’s legal background before she joined the bench in 2002.
She has practised insolvency law and this kind of order is practically boilerplate in situations where a company declares bankruptcy or seeks protection from creditors.
In many cases, the court uses its discretion to insert a monitor into the company to do exactly what Brown has ordered here — watchdog spending and cash flow.
Brown used the inherent jurisdiction of the court to apply a remedy to the teachers’ dispute that we usually see under very different circumstances.
Whether it works better than the usual punishment of fines and imprisonment remains to be seen.
As he watched teachers continue to picket Friday at a junior secondary and an elementary school across from his house, chair of the Canadian Bar Association’s labour law section Gavin Marshall agreed but continued to laud Brown.
“I thought it was a very sophisticated way of approaching the problem — I think it’s unique in Canadian labour history to appoint a monitor to oversee the assets of a public sector union in a contempt of court situation,” he told me.
I think Brown correctly understood that she was being painted into a corner by bad legislation and the dinosaur dynamics of school labour relations.
She found an elegant way, in my opinion, to strangle the ability of the union to continue what has been declared an illegal activity in a manner that doesn’t create the impression the court is taking sides.
That’s a really good aspect to her decision.
But there is an iron fist inside this velvet glove.
Her ruling leaves open the prospect of a serious penalty being imposed down the road if the teachers don’t wind down their job action.
“She walked a finer legal line than many people expected,” Marshall said.
“It’s certainly not the hammer we were expecting.”
No, the hammer is just being held back for now.
Let’s face it, the union executive had no intention of obeying any order, regardless of cost.
They made that clear in their public pronouncements and Brown took them at their word.
With her judgment though, she stepped over them and delivered a message directly to the individual members and their wallets.
She’s given each teacher a chance to return to work or stand up and prove what the leadership has been saying is true — there are principles on the line here that demand large-scale civil disobedience.
I’m skeptical.
It looks like they want more money to me.
Furthermore, I keep hearing mounting anecdotal evidence that many BCTF members want a face-saving solution to end this impasse.
I think Brown provided that.
If the teachers don’t return to work, I expect Brown to really make it hurt.
And this decision underscores just what kind of sweeping power she has.
– – –
On Monday I wrote a column that said Veselin Topalov was on the verge of winning the world chess championship.
On Thursday he coasted to victory, winning the title with a round to spare over seven of the world’s best players.
The 30-year-old Bulgarian was inspired throughout the tournament that saw him outplay his opponents, go undefeated and score 10 points out of a possible 14.
He drew his last game Friday against Judit Polgar, the strongest-ever woman player.
imulgrew@png.canwest.com
© The Vancouver Sun 2005
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Sims: Political prowess, steely resolve
Steve Mertl
Canadian Press
Saturday, October 15, 2005
Jinny Sims seems an unlikely candidate to face down the provincial government and the wrath of the courts over an illegal strike by teachers.
The head of the B.C. Teachers’ Federation is a diminutive 53-year-old.
But there’s also this about Sims: she has a black belt in judo and as a former competitive fencer knows something about swordplay. She can also work a room like a veteran politician, making the kind of individual connection that conveys her message and cements loyalty.
Sims was a child when her family emigrated to England from India’s Punjab in 1962.
She once dreamed of becoming an airline pilot, among other things, but volunteer work as a teenager drew her to teaching.
Sims earned her credentials in England and taught there initially, heading her school’s judo and fencing teams as well as working with youth in a juvenile prison.
She and teacher-husband Stephen Sims came to Canada in 1975, teaching for two years in Quebec before settling in Nanaimo, on Vancouver Island. Sims taught high school social studies and English while also serving as a guidance counsellor.
Sims got involved with the federation early, mainly on issues of social justice and the status of women.
The federation didn’t become the teachers’ accredited bargaining agent until the late 1980s.
“I would say that mobilized me in a political way, though I believe all of my involvement has been political,” Sims says.
Her involvement intensified as the union fought with successive B.C. governments over not just wages but class sizes and school funding.
“I worked very hard in my lifetime of teaching to make improvements for students’ learning conditions,” she says. “In 2002, I cried when those were stripped away by the stroke of a pen by a government through legislation once again.”
David Chudnovsky, a former president of the federation and now a New Democratic Party MLA, says of Sims: “She’s a schoolteacher, she’s a grandma, she’s a very kind-hearted, good-hearted person, but nobody should underestimate her resolve.”
Her approach seems to resonate with others in the labour movement too. The 470,000-member B.C. Federation of Labour’s affiliated unions are rallying round and there are rumblings of a general strike.
“We’ve never been to where Jinny Sims has brought us,” says Terry Allan, a member of a Canadian Union of Public Employees’ local that represents school support staff. “It’s as scary for us as it is for them. Nobody’s ever been this far.”
© The Vancouver Sun 2005
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Brown: Judge in teachers ruling ‘one of better’ benchers
Neal Hall
Vancouver Sun
Saturday, October 15, 2005
B.C. Supreme Court Justice Brenda Brown, who crafted the contempt-of-court decision this week against the B.C. Teachers’ Federation, was known as an excellent litigator during her years as a courtroom lawyer.
“She was excellent counsel and hers was one of the better appointments to the bench in a long, long time,” said George Cadman, a senior lawyer at the Vancouver law firm Boughton, where Brown worked in the 1980s when the firm was known as Boughton Peterson Yang Anderson.
“She practised in the litigation section and was very good counsel,” Cadman recalled.
In 1995, Brown went to work for another Vancouver firm, Davis & Co., specializing in civil litigation in the areas of insolvency, construction and commercial law. Brown was an associate counsel at the firm when she was appointed to the bench of the B.C. Supreme Court on April 18, 2002.
A profile of Brown in The Advocate, a journal published by the Vancouver Bar Association, says she was born in Alberta and grew up near Pincher Creek, where her parents ran a general store and service station.
She graduated from the University of Alberta with a degree in psychology and obtained her law degree from the University of Victoria in 1980. She worked as a law clerk for a year at the B.C Court of Appeal, doing legal research for judges on cases, and articled with the late Boyd Ferris at Boughton. She was called to the bar in 1982.
She married criminal lawyer Norman Callegaro and has two teenagers, a son and daughter.
The Advocate had this to say about Brown: “She has the charm of enjoying a laugh at her own expense more than the expense of others. She is an eclectic reader and movie watcher and no stranger to subtitles. A good bottle of wine is not wasted on Brenda, who attends a monthly wine dinner with compatriots with similar taste buds.”
One of Brown’s first high-profile cases as a judge was in November, 2002, when she ruled against the City of Vancouver over the Arbutus corridor, which included a rail line running north-south through Kitsilano and along Arbutus to the Fraser River.
The city wanted to preserve the corridor for transportation but property owner Canadian Pacific Railway planned to develop the land for housing, commercial or industrial uses.
CPR launched the legal challenge after Vancouver city council passed a bylaw in July 2000 designating the corridor for use only as a public thoroughfare. In her 37-page decision, Brown ruled the city did not have the power to enact such a bylaw and quashed it.
© The Vancouver Sun 2005
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B.C. unions to discuss Monday walkout
By JEREMY HAINSWORTH
Saturday, October 15, 2005 Posted at 8:07 PM EDT
Canadian Press
Vancouver — B.C. labour leaders planned to meet Sunday to decide whether public and private-sector union members in the Victoria area would walk off the job Monday in support of the province’s striking teachers.
Labour Minister Mike de Jong said that while the government won’t seek a court injunction to stop the unions from walking out, it could be risky for them.
Mr. de Jong said Friday he finds it troubling that other unions would link themselves to the B.C. Teachers’ Federation whose strike has been characterized as illegal and continues in defiance of two court orders.
He said workers who join a Monday walkout could be disciplined under the provincial Labour Code.
B.C. Federation of Labour president Jim Sinclair said he would call off the walkout if the government agreed to sit down to bargain with the teachers over the weekend.
“There’s still lots of time left but I haven’t heard any news from the teachers that would encourage me that the government understands that it’s going to take some conversations between the parties to fix the problem,” Mr. Sinclair said Saturday.
Mr. Sinclair has asked members of public and private sector unions to leave work and join a march in Victoria at 11 a.m. Monday and gather at the legislature at 1 p.m. as it sits for the first time since the strike began Oct. 7.
“It is going to be a lot of people,” Mr. Sinclair said. “This is a very serious, sobering moment for the labour movement.
“None of us are excited or ecstatic about what’s happening here,” he said. “This is a very difficult situation made all the more difficult by the fact that the government which is actually the employer of these . . . teachers is refusing to talk to their employees.
“They’re hiding behind the courts and it’s not going to work and it’s making a big mess out of the education system.”
Federation officials were to meet on Sunday to see what events had transpired during the weekend.
Mr. de Jong, however, has vowed not to bargain with people who are breaking the law.
And teachers’ union president Jinny Sims remains just as resolute.
She says the teachers will not back down.
She has remained open to meeting with government representatives and maintains she is confounded by the minister’s refusal to meet with teachers.
Mr. Sinclair has the backing of the leaders of the Canadian Auto Workers, B.C. Government Employees’ Union, Hospital Employees’ Union the Canadian Union of Public Employees and many more.
He said the protest Monday won’t affect patient-care services, extended care or services to those with disabilities.
“It is absolutely essential that we are disciplined in our support and that we do not give government a way to shift the focus from teachers and students by turning a spotlight on disruptions to patient, resident and client care,” Hospital Employees’ Union secretary-business manager Judy Darcy said in a news release.
The strike by 38,000 B.C. teachers has kept about 600,000 public school students from kindergarten to Grade 12 out of school.
Mr. Sinclair indicated the 470,000-member federation’s campaign in support of teachers could escalate if there’s no resolution to the dispute.
Striking B.C. teachers said on Friday that a court ruling freezing their strike pay has only hardened their resolve to stay off the job until the government negotiates with them.
The B.C. Supreme Court has frozen the assets of the B.C. Teachers Federation to punish teachers for continuing their illegal strike.
The ruling Thursday means teachers won’t get their $50-a-day strike pay.
The B.C. government imposed a contract on teachers that contains no wage increase.
Although the B.C. Labour Relations Board ruled last Oct. 7 that the teachers’ strike was illegal, they have stayed off the job.
Last weekend, the B.C. Supreme Court found them in contempt of court for defying the board’s ruling.
Before going back to work, teachers want to negotiate a contract that includes a 15 per cent wage increase over three years and guarantees of smaller classes.
B.C. teachers are the third highest-paid in Canada.
Education Minister Shirley Bond has said the average teacher starting salary is about $42,000 a year.
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