Don't plan for 'normal,' says BC teachers union before back-to-work bill passage

VANCOUVER - A wide-ranging education bill reviled by British Columbia's teachers as a straitjacket on their profession is expected to become law today, ending six months of job action against their vehement objections.

While the passage of Bill 22, the Education Improvement Act, will ultimately set the current dispute on the road towards settlement, observers say it's a forced resolution that does nothing to solve the decades-old conflict between teachers and the B.C. government.

"It will enshrine the situation ... and it will become another incident along the way in a bad relationship," said Prof. Charles Ungerleider, an education sociologist at the University of B.C. and a former B.C. deputy minister of education.

"It becomes part of the litany of grievances. And that's not a way to overcome the difficulty."

Some 41,000 school teachers, who have been working without a contract since last June, have vigorously resisted the B.C. government's staunch resolve to strike "net-zero" deals with its public sector unions.

But educators' job action has failed to budge the governing B.C. Liberals, who have vowed to use their majority to attain royal assent for the law by 5 p.m. Thursday and compel teachers to resume full classroom duties.

Even so, Glen Hansman, with the B.C. Teachers' Federation, said nothing in the legislation or the teachers' collective agreement defines exactly what teachers must do.

"It's not going to be an automatic ... the bill carries and 'poof,' things go back to normal," said the union vice-president. "I don't think anyone should be expecting that things are going to go back to normal."

The union will discuss how to fulfil the bill's requirements at its annual general meeting, scheduled for Saturday through Tuesday, Hansman said. That will include voting on whether teachers will halt voluntary supervision of extracurricular activities.

With the two sides at loggerheads for the better part of a year, there's little expectation of the bill will prompt anything but another imposed contract.

"The fundamental differences are still there," said Fiona McQuarrie, an instructor at the University of the Fraser Valley's school of business. "They'll continue to be there as long as teachers want the working conditions they want and government is reluctant to pay that."

B.C. teachers are deemed an essential service, and therefore have limited means of exerting bargaining pressure.

Starting last September, they scaled back duties as far as permitted, including withholding report cards and refusing parent-teacher meetings. Last week, they escalated tactics by staging a three-day walkout ? the length of time permitted by the Labour Relations Board after the union made a legal case to do so.

Teachers argue the dispute revolves around deteriorating classroom conditions, including rising class sizes and not enough resources for special needs children. They said a demand for a 15-per-cent wage hike is not their main objective, but merely a starting position for negotiations.

With no signs of the dispute abating, the B.C. Liberal government moved in with back-to-work legislation earlier this month. Education Minister George Abbott said he would not rush the bill through the legislature, resulting in two weeks of debate while the B.C. Teachers Federation went on strike and held outdoor rallies aimed at galvanizing public support.

The immediate impact of the legislation will be to initiate a six-month "cooling off period," which is intended to halt job action and jumpstart collective bargaining. The bill legally obligates both parties to return to the table under a government-appointed mediator.

That independent third party is tasked with helping the sides find common ground, but remains bound by the government's "net-zero" terms. The mediator has until end of August to bring the two together, or else must make recommendations around what can be done to resolve outstanding issues.

The legislation also sets out fines, should either party break the rules, as well as designates that a B.C. Supreme Court ruling around classroom size and composition not be tackled until the next round of negotiations in summer 2013. Abbott has conceded he expects that imposed delay to be challenged in court.

If there's no drastic position shift by either side, a contract will be legislated.

Just such a scenario has played out in all contract renewals but two since the early 1990s, when the NDP government legislated a shift from localized to centralized bargaining. The latter, current system is one in which the employer negotiates with B.C. teachers as a whole rather than with individual school boards.

Coupled with the essential service designation, the teachers' relationship with the government has been almost constantly strained.

While several attempts have been made over the years to root out the underlying problems and recommend a way forward, none have succeeded. Among those efforts was a review of the collective bargaining system by Don Wright in 2004, which the teachers said came up with wrong-headed results. In 2007, an industrial inquiry report by Vincent Ready supported Wright's recommendations.

"It's not as though there have not been ideas floated in the past by very thoughtful, expert people," said University of B.C. labour relations Prof. Tom Knight.

"It's the parties ? sorry to say it ? but particularly the teachers refusing to say, 'OK, yes, we need to do things different.'"

Teachers have a stated policy goal of returning to localized bargaining, along with a stance to avoid any deal that involves contract stripping. That clashes with the government's refusal to inject any new funds, which it cites as prudence in a time of fiscal austerity.

MLA Bob Simpson, who has sat as an independent since splitting from the NDP in 2010, has taken a fine-toothed comb to Bill 22 and decided to vote against it as "just bad legislation."

He believes the earlier reviews got it right in attempting to map out a provincial template for bargaining that doesn't simply set the government's position as the "default."

He's pushing for implementation of Wright's suggestions, which comprise a structured, 10-month negotiation process that begins long before a contract expires, and involves a third-party arbitrator who closely watches both sides to call any "bluffs." If the dispute can't be settled, binding arbitration is imposed.

Simpson believes teachers should take a vote on agreeing to try out the new system.

"I don't understand why the BCTF would not say 'Fine, it's a risk, but it's a big risk for government as well ... so let's go there.'"

The MLA conceded that since the government has the upper-hand, it would be its role to forge the new reality.

"I think a government has to have the moral courage of simply imposing a new system."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/dont-plan-normal-says-bc-teachers-union-back-080728840.html

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