VANCOUVER – British Columbia’s teachers want the right to walk off the job for nearly two weeks in their ongoing contract dispute.
Teachers have been on a limited strike since the beginning of the school year, but because of essential services legislation, that job action has been limited to skipping administrative tasks rather than a full-scale walkout.
The B.C. Teachers’ Federation wants that to change, and asked the Labour Relations Board on Monday night to allow teachers to pull their services for four days a week for two weeks.
Their employer countered by suggesting teachers should be limited to walking out for a single day over a 10-day period, while returning to their full duties when they’re at work.
The teachers’ application was in response to the education minister’s announcement last week that the government is preparing to table back-to-work legislation to end the dispute.
Union lawyer Carmela Allevato said the teachers’ proposal was “the right balance” between protecting education as an essential service and allowing teachers to exercise their constitutional right to strike.
Allevato said the legislation is designed to prevent an “immediate and serious disruption” to education services, which she argued doesn’t mean teachers can never strike.
“The big determination that has yet to be decided by the (Labour Relations) Board is at what point do we reach the threshold established in the legislation of a serious and immediate disruption to the delivery of educational programs?” Allevato told the hearing in Vancouver.
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“We say that (the union’s proposal) ensures the disruption is not serious and immediate, and it allows the teachers on a limited basis to engage in a meaningful withdrawal of their labour.”
Under the essential services legislation, teachers must have the labour board’s approval before withdrawing any services.
Allevato said the union is seeking an interim order allowing teachers to strike for four days a week for two weeks. After that, the union wants the board to issue a broader ruling outlining how far teachers can go under the essential services rules.
The B.C. Public School Employers’ Association instead asked the board to limit any walkout to one day out of 10 days of instruction. In addition, the association wants the board to order teachers to resume the administrative duties they’ve been skipping since September. That has included issuing report cards and marking final exams.
The employers argued the board should then craft a new scheme for strike action that would take into account the fact that the school year is more than half over and students in certain grade levels are being affected more adversely, such as Grade 12 students awaiting marks for post-secondary applications.
“The continued withdrawal of those activities will result in an immediate and serious disruption to student educational programs in the current school year, for summer school, which is coming up, and for the coming school year, because of critical planning that must occur,” said the employers’ association’s lawyer, Delayne Sartison.
“The continued withdrawal now will result in the immediate disruption of the employer’s ability to provide programs in each of those contexts.”
It wasn’t clear when the board would rule on how the strike will proceed.
Before the hearing, union president Susan Lambert insisted teachers were backed into a corner by the provincial government’s refusal to budge.
“We’re trying to get the mechanics in place to allow our members the widest possible choices in terms of courses of action,” she told reporters.
“We don’t want to do this; we don’t even want to be here. What we want is a negotiated collective agreement signed at the table. Barring that, maybe a mediated process, and barring that, possibly an arbitrated process. But we certainly don’t want to have to do what we’re asking tonight.”
Teachers want a 15 per cent wage increase, while the province maintains it is not prepared to consider any wage increases.
The Liberal government has been negotiating contracts under what it has described as a “net-zero mandate,” in which new public sector collective agreements cannot cost the province any additional money. That means any wage increases must be offset by concessions elsewhere in a contract.
Education Minister George Abbott has said while teachers have a democratic right to escalate job action, it would only increase the harm to students and impact their parents.
“The union’s demands, which would add $2 billion in costs for B.C. taxpayers, are not acceptable given the current financial reality,” Abbott said.
The government maintains that three quarters of public-sector unions have settled their contracts under the current policy.
B.C. teachers launched an illegal strike in 2005, resulting in a $500,000 fine for their union after the government had already legislated a contract.
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