The Real Issue in the BCTF/Provincial Government Dispute

After all is said and done and notwithstanding what I've written up to this point, below is a description of what I believe to be the real issue in the dispute between the BCTF and the Provincial Government:

What is really behind the scenes in this government/union dispute? I have said more than once that this is a power struggle. It seems some people don’t really understand what I mean by this. What I mean, simply, is that it is a struggle for power over the implementation of the educational program in this province.

It is not about salaries. It is not about demands for preparation time. It is not even about lowering class size. It is about control. Let me explain.

In 1998 Premiere Glen Clark (NDP) let the genie out of the bottle when he struck a deal with the BCTF. In exchange for accepting a 0-0-2% deal over three years, the union could now bargain province-wide class-size limits in primary grades.

School Board Trustees opposed the contract, saying that these class-size limits took management powers away from school administrators. Overall, 93% of British Columbia School Boards rejected this contract.

Let’s stop for a minute. Who were these School Board Trustees? Were they the government? Well, technically they were in a way, but not in the way the provincial government is. But in reality these Trustees were a cross-section of society. They were you and me. They could have been farmers, or business people, nurses or even lawyers. They were people who lived and worked right here beside us, with us. They were charged with the responsibility of delivering a quality educational program to our students.

It is this group of people all across the province of British Columbia that overwhelmingly rejected the idea of giving the union the right to bargain class size.

But why? As the School Trustees said above, “..class-size limits took management powers away from school administrators…”. What does this mean, exactly? As Tom Fletcher of BC Local News said in 2012, “One of the first things I had to learn as a private sector manager is that if you don’t control your budget, you aren’t really a manager. And no one who lets authority over staffing levels slip away can possibly control their budget. Control over staffing levels is what the NDP let slip to the BCTF in 1998.”

University of Victoria business professor Ken Thornicroft said that giving up control over class size to the BCTF is the same as giving authority over spending to someone who is not elected.

So, the British Columbia School Trustees rejected this contract. As a matter of fact, they didn’t even know about it when it was being proposed to the union. Glen Clark and his trusty side-kick, Adrian Dix, cut the deal, privately, with the union. When the Trustees found out about it they rejected it.

The NDP government then imposed the contract. That’s right. They imposed it on the School Trustees, the employer, who were supposed to be the regulatory body that delivered the education program to our students.

Fast forward to 2002. The government screwed up again. Christy Clark, then Minister of Education, and Gordon Campbell tried to get the genie back in the bottle. You know how the story goes. You can’t put the genie back in the bottle. But the BC Liberals have spent the last 12 years trying to do just that.

So to start with, they ripped up the existing contract to get this class size and composition thing back where it was: in legislation, and out of the collective agreement. Can you imagine how the BCTF felt about this? Incensed comes close.

Naturally they took the government to court. And we all know the story from here: Two positive rulings for the BCTF and two appeals by the government. The last appeal is yet to be decided. We await October.

As Larry Pynn said just the other day in the Vancouver Sun, “Basically, the government is asking the teachers to give up what they’ve won in court.” And that is exactly what is happening.

The government’s position is that they have the right to manage because they are the employer and they control the “purse strings”.

The fly in the ointment is that “class size and composition” as learning and working conditions overlap with “class size and composition” being the mechanism for management to apply staffing levels.

Now whether or not you agree with where class size and composition should exist, in a collective agreement or legislation, the major pitfall to this whole mess is that both the Provincial Government and the BCTF are fighting for control of this. The rest is just window dressing.

Unfortunately, not many teachers I’ve talked to are really aware of this. However, I believe their leadership is very aware. I believe that both the government and the BCTF are taking unfair advantage of students, teachers and parents to promote their causes.

Because this is such a contentious issue, the government and the BCTF should practice what they preach when they tout expressions like: Collaborator, Innovator, Learner, Thinker, Contributor and solve this problem while our children receive the quality education they are entitled to.

I believe that both sides should stand down and let our children back in school.