Teachers across the province, including 900 in School District 57, will be taking a strike vote today.
But even if they vote in favour, it's doubtful they'll take to the picket lines in September, according to Prince George and District Teachers Association vice president Matt Pearce.
Rather, they'll take other steps to make their feelings known.
"Teachers do not want to strike and in fact the proposed job action does not entail closing our schools or effecting students and parents," Pearce said. "The job action will target only the employer in that teachers will drop many administrative tasks that have limited our ability to focus on teaching and learning."
Pearce cited a list of grievances for taking the step beginning with a refusal by the provincial government to reinstate teachers' right to negotiate class sizes following a B.C. Supreme Court ruling striking down 2002 legislation.
"The government has refused to obey the court and has promised more legislation in the spring," Pearce said.
Against this backdrop, Pearce said the provincial government's bargaining agent, the B.C. Public School Employers Association (BCPSEA) has been tabling a series of contract stripping proposals that "make the illegal bills look like child's play."
"Teachers will not agree to further contract strips after having worked for nine years unable to meet the needs of our students," Pearce said. "We believe that the government and the employer are collaborating to further strip the contract to enable them to pull even more support away from our students."
In a bulletin on teacher bargaining issued Friday on bargaining with teachers, BCPSEA said the court did find the legislation's provisions to be invalid but also gave the government one year to address the repercussions of the decision.
BCPSEA also disputes the contract stripping assertion saying the proposals represent change and introduce different ideas but were intended to serve as a starting point for the discussions. BCPSEA has made it clear it's bound by a "net zero" mandate in which public sector agreements 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 B.C. Teachers Federation (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.
BCPSEA claims the ranking is actually third once benefits are taken into account "but if you add in working conditions that don't exist here like the substantial increases in prep time that you see in other provinces, I think it goes back the other way again," Pearce said.
Salaries not as big an issue in Prince George as in the Lower Mainland, said Pearce, because teachers here make a bit more money in acknowledgment of the fact they live in northern B.C. and also face a lower cost of living.
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.
