By Andrew Fleming, Vancouver Courier
A weary-looking Jim Iker addressed the media in the afternoon of September 16 inside a sweltering boardroom at the BCTF office building and said he wants teachers to vote in favour of a tentative six-year deal.
He wouldn’t give specifics because the province’s 40,000 teachers hadn’t yet been given copies of the hard-fought agreement reached in the wee hours of the morning the same day.
“This afternoon, the BCTF executive committee met and recommended that teachers vote Yes to ratify this tentative agreement,” said the BCTF president. “It was a tough series of negotiations but there were meaningful achievements in this field for teachers and students. A tentative deal includes hundreds of new teaching positions each year as the result of an annual education fund that will be used exclusively for bargaining with new members, a mutually agreed process to address any future court decision, significant grievance remedy fund that will be used for a one-time payment to our members in improvements in elementary preparation time, improvements in salary and in health and medical benefits, pair pay for teachers teaching on-call for every day that they work and also for no concessions.”
He added that mutually agreed-to procedure will be used to address any future court decision as well as the removal of the contentious contract clause E80.
The province’s 41,000 teachers, who have never in their history voted contrary to the wishes of the BCTF executive, are expected to vote on whether to accept the package September 18. The public is prohibited from being told the complete details of the proposed deal until it is ratified by BCTF members, although leaked details are rumored to include a 7.25% pay raise for teachers over six years, $108 million set aside to address class size and composition grievances and an education fund of $480 million over five years with $400 million for BCTF members and $80 million for CUPE school support workers.
If teachers vote in favour of the deal, classes could begin again as early as Monday, September 22.
— with files from Cheryl Rossi, Vancouver Courier
Vancouver Courier
