The Editor,
It is wrong-headed to suggest, as seems the fashion, that the BC Teachers' Federation and the provincial government are equally to blame for the current impasse or, even worse, that teachers are just asking for too much.
The linchpin is this government's hardbitten intransigence in disobeying two Supreme Court judgments ordering it to negotiate class composition/size - i.e., learning conditions - which is teachers' number one concern. They proved it by dramatically dropping salary demands to below what is fair (considering a history of less than 1% a year in the last 16 years).
The real working life of a typical teacher consists of 10+ hour days with further evening and weekend overtime, in classrooms overloaded with a mix of mostly unsupported special needs cases that make teaching itself well-nigh impossible. Teachers now endure stress to levels unimaginable in most jobs.
Government has been eager to save hundreds of millions by placing special needs children in regular classes but has simply not followed up by providing enough support workers to make that policy successful; rather, special needs budgets have been progressively cut.
Critiques are answered by propaganda, false advertising and prevarication - also how they win elections. The most recent example is the nonsense ad about teachers' demands being outside the "affordability zone," which apparently does not exist for rich corporations behind mega-projects or debt incurred through government mismanagement (e.g., the hydro debt to California).
Meantime, several groups have, in fact, achieved contracts outside the magic "zone", including police officers, firefighters, bus drivers and employees of BC Hydro, BCIT, SkyTrain and more.
The hidden agenda here is privatization via slow strangulation.
There is no underfunding? Really? Why, then, have districts across B.C., despite maximized fundraising efforts and extra income from programs such as international education, resorted to laying off droves of teachers with even nine years experience, including in vital areas such as library services?
Teachers now have their backs to the wall with intolerable classroom conditions and substandard wages because the government hasn't obeyed the law for 12 years. Victoria's appeal of the two judgments is a cynical ploy to avert or delay truly investing in public education while supporting private education, enabling small classes there.
Are the rest of our children not good enough? "Families first"? Pfah!
Felix Thijssen, Coquitlam
