Teachers' dispute down to public pressure and first to fold

You can tune out all the rhetoric from both sides in the teachers’ dispute at this point. 

It has come down to a simple question - who will fold first.

The government hopes the BCTF will accept a negotiated deal, to avoid - or reduce - the risk of legal challenges. Given its losing record in the courts, that’s understandable.

The union would rather be legislated back if an acceptable deal can’t be reached, for the same reason. (The union leadership, after taking members out in a costly, ineffective strike strategy, also doesn’t really want to try and explain why the result was a mediocre negotiated settlement.)

So they are hunkered down, blaming each other and trying to rally support for their cause.

The government’s brave rhetoric about letting the strike/lockout continue is empty. Parents and the public won’t tolerate a government that fails to use its power to re-open schools. Especially given Premier Christy Clark’s past claims that education is an essential service.

But the Liberals hope the BCTF will cave before it has to legislate an end to the strike. Teachers lose, on average, about $1,700 a week in gross pay as the strike continues. They are already out $3,500-plus, with the losses mounting by the day. And they know that any settlement is not going to recover those losses.

Teacher support for the strike is fading, according to columnist Bill Tieleman. His piece in The Tyee argued that the union should continue the strike. One reason, he said, was that if the BCTF called a pause in the strike members would refuse to go back to the picket lines.

So parents and students wait, the parties wage a PR war and the schools stay closed.

What is most irritating is that the union and government have had five or six years to act on sound proposals to improve this hopelessly flawed bargaining process, but have done nothing.