Premier Christy Clark’s platform pledge to achieve an unprecedented 10-year collective agreement with the BC Teachers’ Federation (BCTF) was the butt of knowing laughter from pundits during May’s election campaign.
How could a premier trailing in the polls expect teachers, who dealt her a major defeat during her time as education minister, to lock down wages and working conditions for 10 years?
But Clark’s stunning upset wiped the smiles off a lot of faces, not least among BCTF leaders, who were quietly achieving surprising progress, with the help of a facilitator, on a new agreement with the BC School Trustees and the BC Public School Employers Association.
Within days of the election, the education ministry advised the parties that Clark’s 10-year pledge was the new mandate, setting the stage for an immediate and crucial test of wills between the premier and her old adversaries in the BCTF.
Critics of the 10-year plan say such a long-term agreement would be bad for the education system.
“I worry such a long agreement could not provide the flexibility required to reflect the changes in the education system,” said Fiona McQuarrie, an industrial relations specialist at the University of the Fraser Valley, whose textbook is used in more than 30 colleges and universities.
What’s more, she wrote in a recent post on her All About Work blog, the government’s decision to forge ahead could derail the positive direction of the current talks “by introducing a bargaining proposal that can only set the parties against each other.
“This stubbornness is not a good sign for labour relations in B.C. in the next few years.”
The 10-year scheme was formally launched by the education ministry in January with the publication of a policy paper on bargaining called “Working Together for Students: A Framework for Long-term Stability in Education.”
Teachers and employers essentially ignored the proposal, signing their own agreement to bargain with a facilitator. Talks progressed well.
But with Clark’s election win, the 10-year plan, also proposed for nurses, is suddenly getting another look.
If the framework’s objectives are achieved, the teachers could be in a new 10-year agreement by autumn.
In her campaign television program, Clark sold the idea as the key to labour peace in the school system, arguing “one of the best things we can do is pursue a 10-year collective agreement with teachers, so that for a decade there is no possibility of a labour dispute for our kids.”
No possibility of a labour dispute? That’s not what the framework says.
Clark’s framework offers teachers a seat at the table to allocate the cash in a new Priority Education Investment Fund, the size of which would be determined by government. Salaries and benefits would be indexed to those negotiated elsewhere in the public sector, not negotiated.
The plan sets a firm June 30 deadline for terms of settlement to be proposed by a mediator, who would report publicly on the costs of both sides’ positions.
If the BCTF rejects that settlement proposal, or a final offer tabled by government, it must issue strike notice by August 31 and schools would remain closed. If it doesn’t issue strike notice, the mediator’s report becomes the collective agreement. This pattern would repeat every year, unless the parties agreed to some longer term.
The newly elected government is effectively daring the teachers to pull the trigger on job action in less than 90 days if they don’t like what a new mediator proposes.
Given the election’s outcome, the public’s weariness with strike action in the education sector and clear demoralization among the rank and file, BCTF activists will have to move very carefully.
Whatever they decide, it seems likely that the current silence on the education labour front is just the calm before the storm. Ten years is a long time.
