2012 will be remembered in Prince George public schools as the year of the strike.
Although schools were closed for only three days, the 10-month job action was the longest province-wide strike in the 93-year history of the B.C. Teachers Federation.
It began in September 2011 with teachers refusing supervisory duties and not attending staff organizational meetings in their schools. It escalated in February when the province tabled Bill 22 legislation, which made it illegal for teachers to bargain on class size and composition, a right that had been restored to the BCTF in a 2011 B.C. Supreme Court decision. That prompted the province's 41,000 teachers to withdraw from all extracurricular activities and take up picket lines in a three-day walkout in March.
The BCTF filed court actions to challenge Bill 22, which also took away teachers' right to strike, and under the threat of heavy fines they returned to their jobs. After weeks of consultation orchestrated by mediator Charles Jago, the labour dispute ended in late June when teachers voted 75 per cent in favour of accepting a two-year contract which brought modest gains in benefits to teachers, but no wage increases and no improvements in class size and composition.
Throughout their job action, teachers vowed to keep disruptions to students to a minimum and for the most part they succeeded. The union imposed a ban on teachers performing extracurricular duties, which forced cancellation of some field trips, and some teachers took it upon themselves to decide they no longer wanted to give up their own time for sports teams.
"In the unionized environment, labour relations issues, including strikes, are a reality," said School District 57 superintendent Brian Pepper.
"While a variety of learning initiatives and ongoing day-to-day collaboration were impacted by the strike, it is my opinion that our teachers continued to provide excellent learning opportunities for our students."
For most of the 2011-12 school year, principals and senior board administrators handled supervisory roles normally performed by teachers. However, the strike did not create a buildup of animosity between teachers, trustees and the school board administration. In fact, despite what was going on with the stalled provincial negotiations, that spirit of local co-operation to keep students from suffering never waned.
"Our exempt staff, equally dedicated to student learning, were required to undertake duties in addition to their regular work," said Pepper. "This ensured ongoing student safety and where possible and appropriate a normal program of opportunities for learners. We have a culture of collaboration and mutual respect in our district for our exempt and union staff."
As president of the Prince George District Teachers Association, Matt Pearce was the lightning rod, organizing sign-waving teachers for street-side protests in response to their dissatisfaction with the contract-stripping legislation. The union continues to fight Bill 22 and has filed several court actions scheduled to be heard in court in December 2013, and Pearce realizes there could be more troubling times ahead for B.C. schools.
Given the bare cupboard climate of a cash-strapped province and the recent history of labour unrest across most public sector unions, Pearce is not looking forward to the next round of negotiations. Since province-wide bargaining was introduced in 1996, there has been just one negotiated teachers' contract settled without job action.
"It's obvious that the structures around provincial bargaining don't work, never have," said Pearce. "The NDP brought that in in 1996 and it's never functioned. It's been very consistent, with the one exception of when they wanted a five-year deal [in 2006] to get them through the Olympics."
When the government introduced Bill 22 in late February, that meant a legislated end to the contract dispute was on its way and teachers responded with their walkout.
"Parents understood what our job action was about and right up to that point there hadn't been a withdrawal of anything that really affected parents," said Pearce. "We were abstaining from administrative tasks and focusing our pressure on our employer and when Bill 22 came into being and we were aware they were going to legislate us, that's when you saw things that affected our students and classrooms start to occur."
Pearce said teachers, administrators and parents are still wondering how the B.C. Education Plan introduced in 2010 will reform the province's schools. He fears, as the province looks for way to reduce its budget, it will lead to more students taking courses online through correspondence, and as a result, he said fewer high school teachers will be hired.
"Teachers are feeling disgruntled and disconnected," Pearce said. "I think the divide between educational leadership in British Columbia and the people in the classroom has never been greater. There is simply no grassroots following for initiatives directly coming from the ministry or the government, and it's never been to this extent. That means those initiatives have very little chance of succeeding."
The union will continue to push for provisions on classroom composition. Under the previous contract, it was standard practice for teachers with more than three students with individual education plans (IEP) to receive additional instruction help from teaching assistants. Now, there is no such protection on class composition and nothing stopping school boards from placing teachers in classrooms with 10 or 12 IEP students.
"The issues of class size and class composition and learning specialist ratios like teacher librarians and teacher counselors are very important for our members and for students and those were the items stripped out of our collective agreement in 2002 and also part of our huge [B.C. Supreme] court victory in April 2011," said Jim Iker, chief negotiator for the BCTF. "Parts of Bills 27 and 28 were considered unconstitutional and illegal and Justice [Susan] Griffin gave them a year to deal with that, and they put them back into Bill 22."
Bargaining is expected to resume this March. After two years of net-zero wage settlements, Iker said teachers want salary increases that will at least keep up to the rate of inflation and bring them closer to the level of their colleagues in other provinces.
