The tit-for-tat press conferences by Premier Christy Clark and BCTF head Jim Iker did nothing to advance negotiations, and left most people appalled by both sides.
But Clark’s comments seem especially damaging to the government’s long-term interests.
Assume the union holds out and the government legislates teachers back to work and imposes a new contract.
Teachers would then challenge the agreement in court, pointing to the failure to negotiate class size and composition issues, as the B.C. Supreme Court has said it must.
The court didn’t say the provisions, stripped in 2002, must be restored to the contract. But it said there must be good-faith bargaining. (And compensation for the damage done.)
A transcript of Clark’s press conference will be very helpful for the union cause.
Clark said the government would not begin bargaining on class composition until the BCTF reduces its wage and benefit proposals and an agreement was in place on those issues. She didn’t even acknowledge class-size limits as a topic for negotiation.
Clark’s comments indicated the government has made no serious effort to bargain the contentious issues, or address the B.C. Supreme Court ruling that class size and composition issues had been illegally stripped from the contract.
Her public insistence on preconditions before any real negotiation on the issues makes a strong case that the government has not yet accepted the court ruling - or learned how to avoid another court loss.
It will weaken the government's ability to defend an imposed contract from a new legal challenge.
Footnote: The issue isn't complex. The teachers' union had successfully bargained to have class size and composition limits in contracts. (Composition refers to the number of special needs students in a class.)
In 2001, the newly elected Liberals thought the limits were too restrictive, costly and properly a matter of education policy.
So they passed laws in 2002 to strip them from the contract and bar the union from negotiating the issues in future.
The Liberals had a point. Class sizes are matter of education policy, which should be the responsibility of school trustees and MLAs.
But a sensible government would recognize they are also an issue of working conditions. Unions negotiate working conditions. There needs to be some balancing of interests, or at least a good-faith attempt.
The Supreme Court agreed. And it found the law violated the teachers’ rights. They had, presumably, traded off other items in past negotiations to get the clauses in the contracts. Government can not just pass laws to violate agreements without consequences. (The Liberals have accepted this principle in other areas. When it retroactively banned uranium mining, the government agreed to pay more than $30-million to Boss Uranium, recognizing there is a cost to ripping up legal agreements.)
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3 comments:
No "presumably." The teachers did in fact trade off wage and benefit increases to get those clauses in the contracts.
Yes indeed, the government did indeed recognize and accept that there is a cost to ripping up legal agreements when they paid 30 million to Boss Uranium. But wait.....that was a mining company. A favoured species in BC similar to Basi-Virk and 6 million in legal fees paid on behalf of the guilty.
I think the furniture will now require some rearranging since Iker's agreed to binding arbitration for the issues that aren't before the Courts - oh - and that the teachers will go back to school.
It will be interesting to see how Christy Clark 'bends' that offer!
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