There's an old saying in politics that you solve today's problems and don't worry about tomorrow too much. That's a problem for the next guy to fix.
For Gordon Campbell, the next "guy" was Christy Clark and the problem Campbell inadvertently passed on to her was teachers.
But Clark can't solely blame Campbell for Monday's court ruling. She was the education minister at the time the new Liberal government of the day decided to rip up teachers contracts.
Monday's decision was the second time a B.C. Supreme Court judge has ruled that Liberal legislation unilaterally stripping teachers of the right to bargain on class size and composition was unconstitutional.
In 2002, with Clark at the helm of the education ministry, the Liberals passed Bill 28, which not only took away class size and composition from the collective agreement of teachers, it also took away the right for teachers to negotiate those issues in future talks.
The first time the Supreme Court struck down that law was in April 2011 but the judge gave the Liberals a year to make it right.
Instead, the Liberals just passed what the judge called "virtually identical legislation" more than a year later. Bill 22 still took away those bargaining points from teachers but added a clause that the prohibition expired on June 30, 2013. The teachers greeted Bill 22 with a three-day walkout and a new legal challenge.
Not only did the judge find Bill 22 just as unconstitutional as the original Bill 28, she ruled that the Liberals bargained in bad faith with the teachers after the first ruling in 2011 and fined the government $2 million in damages.
Most of all, the new ruling retroactively restores class size and class composition as negotiable items to teacher contracts and they are in play during future rounds of bargaining.
The union hopes the government will finally respect the will of the court and not bother to appeal this latest decision but that might be wishful thinking. The disdain the B.C. Liberals have for public sector unions has only increased during their years in power.
This battle has not just been fought in the legal courts but also in the court of public opinion. The Liberals have gone to great lengths to convince the public to share their view of public sector employees as greedy, underworked and overpaid leeches with a grossly inflated sense of entitlement.
This is where the Liberals are identical to the Social Credit party, their political predecessors. So when Clark and her Liberal colleagues talk about forging a new relationship with teachers, what they really mean is a relationship where government gets everything it wants and teachers (and eventually all public sector employees) lie down and take what they're given.
Unfortunately for the government, the teachers now have the courts on their side, not once but twice.
With health and education so a big part of the provincial budget, and salaries such a big part of the health and education budgets, the Liberals targeted the unionized employees in those fields as the quickest, most efficient ways of cutting costs.
Also unfortunately for the government, as well as taxpayers (public sector employees do fall into this category), there are no easy fixes, like layoff off staff and ripping up union contracts, to combat the soaring costs to provide health care and education in the 21st century.
Instead, these complicated problems require complicated solutions, which will require the government to work with its public sector employees to find ways to both control spending while improving efficiency and service. Working together, however, takes trust, an ingredient sorely missing from any meeting between these two sides.
Monday's court ruling is an opportunity for Clark. By accepting the court's decision unconditionally and admitting the past treatment of teachers by the government was wrong, she would be paying teachers some hard-earned and long-overdue respect.
If the Premier is sincere in her desire for a better relationship with teachers, some grudging respect would be a good way to start.
