Depending on how negotiations go over the next few weeks, teachers could be taking a vote near the end of this month to launch job action in September, the B.C. Teachers Federation (BCTF) warned in a press release.
BCTF president Susan Lambert stopped short of threatening a full-blown strike at the outset at least, but did say teachers will not be doing administrative work or attending meetings with management, depending on the outcome of the vote, set to be held between June 24 and 28.
"We're facing resistance at both local and provincial tables, with the BC Public School Employers' Association [BCPSEA, the provincial government's bargaining agent] stalling on the split of issues and local trustees refusing to bargain anything of substance," Lambert said.
Prince George and District Teachers Association (PGDTA) vice president Matt Pearce called Lambert's statement accurate when reached Tuesday. He said the PGDTA has brought forward 27 proposals locally but BCPSEA has given School District 57 permission to talk about only seven of them.
"That's a pretty serious problem for us because the 20 that aren't being discussed are the issues that are most important to our membership," Pearce said.
While so-called "money issues" are reserved for the provincial bargaining table, Pearce said there is language negotiated locally around process items such as the protocol for teacher movement within a district.
However, BCPSEA is claiming BCTF has been counselling its teachers to table provincial matters at local tables as part of an effort to return to a bargaining model scrapped in 1997 that saw a broader range of issued negotiated at the local level.
School board chair Lyn Hall maintained he's "not sure" of any attempts to bring provincial issues to the local table in Prince George but stressed a letter of understanding between the BCTF and BCPSEA sets out what can be bargained locally and provincially, "and it's very specific."
Provincially, the sides are taking hard lines on salary and benefit increases.
BCPSEA has made it clear it's bound by a "net zero" mandate in which public sector agreements expiring by the end of this year should be for two years and provide no net increase in costs for the K-12 system.
More than half of the province's employees have signed deals in keeping with that mandate for their respective ministries.
Conversely, the BCTF is seeking salary increases to bring teachers here into line with those in other provinces. In 2006, teachers were ranked third in Canada but have since slipped to eighth, according to the BCTF while BCPSEA claims the ranking is actually third once benefits are taken into account.
A teacher in Prince George can earn a top rate of $81,469 compared to $79,633 in Vancouver. In Edmonton the top rate is $91,213, in Calgary it's $90,944 and in Toronto it's $89,644.
"It's a wait and see and we would certainly hope there is no strike which would delay the start of school in the fall," Hall said.
