Mark Twain meant to say there are lies, damn lies, statistics - and then there are online polls.
Yet, caveats on accuracy aside, a recent informal web ballot by The Citizen nevertheless suggests a deep, surprising lack of sympathy for both B.C. teachers and their ongoing labour dispute with the B.C. Liberals.
In a June poll, 6,851 respondents replied to a question asking readers if they were in support of striking teachers. One answer - No, the teachers are paid well enough for the job they do - received 4,293 nods or clicks, accounting for 63 per cent of the responses, while two other questions - No, but the government is also to blame for the problem and Yes, but their demands are too high - combined for 942 votes, or 14 per cent of the poll.
The first question - Yes, [teachers] should be paid better and receive the support they deserve - took the balance of the poll with 1,1616 votes, or short of 23 per cent.
About 77 per cent of the unscientific poll respondents thought teachers were either unjustified or somewhat unworthy of support in their battle for better working conditions and wages.
That doesn't jibe with the tenor of the letters in favour of teachers that appear on this page - many from angry educators but some from supportive parents. It's almost a B.C. Bradley effect - in person or in writing, people make a great show of backing teachers; behind the cover of the Internet, clickers want Clark to stick it to overpaid educators and their greedy union.
As easy as it is to dismiss the Citizen poll, an Ipsos Reid poll conducted in May also suggests the battle for hearts and minds is very much in doubt in the teachers dispute. While Ipsos Reid found most disapproved of the government in general and education minister Peter Fassbender in particular by rates of 59 per cent and 50 per cent respectively in their handling of the situation, the B.C. Teachers' Federation garnered a 50 per cent disapproval rating while union boss Jim Iker scored a frown factor of 45 per cent.
As Vaughn Palmer pointed out in a recent column, the Liberals would be willing to face far more opposition and loss of popular support so early in their term. But the informal Citizen poll and Ipsos Reid show the public is at least conflicted with - to go with some outright support for - the government's vendetta against the BCTF. That may mean the government won't be legislating teachers back to work or genuinely looking for a mediator to resolve the dispute any time soon - instead they'll let teachers fester on picket lines until anger over lost school days and the toll of lost wages drives a much more malleable BCTF back to the bargaining table
And that was the Liberals plan all along - use bad faith to goad teachers into an untenable position and have the public then blame the BCTF for the poisoned atmosphere in schools.
It's all there in B.C Justice Susan Griffin's decision last January that the government's dealings with teachers has been "a continuation of unlawful conduct which had then been on-going for ten years" and ordered the government to pay $2 million to the BCTF as compensation for the Liberals shoddy behaviour. According to Griffin's findings, as early as March 2011 the Liberals believed, through its bargaining orders to the B.C. Public Schools Employers' Association and its contract-stripping laws, it could force the BCTF into a strike. The next month, Griffin found the Liberals' legislation against the teachers, Bill 28, unconstitutional, ordered the government to restore the teachers' contract to 2002 levels and gave the Liberals one year to fix the situation.
Instead the government did everything, according to cabinet documents and its own lead negotiator, Peter Straszak, it could to push the BCTF into a full-fledged strike, from playing silly buggers in its negotiations with the union over the Bill 28 decision to, after the teachers balked at total job action, forcing school districts to cancel teachers' leaves, pro-d days, and looking for the Labor Relations Board to reduce educators' pay.
It didn't work then - the government eventually brought in Bill 22, legislating teachers back to work, which Griffin again struck down in January.
But it's worked now. The irony is that teachers are, as a matter of legal record and the government's own admission, underpaid; one of the reasons the government engaged in its antics was that repairing the teachers' contract after years of Liberal attacks, would, according to the government, cost $500 million retroactively and $275 million a year going forward.
Those numbers may be moot. The government is appealing Griffin's decision and, according to Palmer, it could take years before the BCTF returns to court. In the meantime, the teachers will be out of work and vulnerable in the strike the Liberals finally got - look for the government to wring an end to legal action and a significant watering down of the Griffin decision from the BCTF before putting educators back to work.
It's amazing what a government can do when it fools just enough people just enough of the time.
