As his first order of business, new Education Minister Peter Fassbender has suspended talks with teachers while he overhauls the bargaining process in pursuit of a 10-year deal.
"The old way does not work. It is time for a new path, a new beginning," Fassbender said.
His new approach includes bringing in a government appointed mediator and removing the B.C. Public School Employers' Association (BCPSEA) from the bargaining table.
"It was the teacher's federation that asked the government to bargain directly on the five key elements," Fassbender said. "We have said we want to honour that, we want to sit down face to face, we want to get into those discussions, but one of our priorities that we ran on and we're very clear about and Premier Clark was very clear, is that we want to have long-term stability for students, for teachers, school trustees, communities. That's our goal."
Teachers cried foul over the move to sidestep BCPSEA, saying it ended five months of productive negotiations that saw movement on some issues.
"Teachers, more than anyone, would welcome long-term labour stability in public education. But you cannot achieve labour peace by interfering in a constructive process and locking in current problems for another decade," said B.C. Teachers' Federation (BCTF) president Susan Lambert.
In response to some teachers' fears about what a 10-year deal might look like, Fassbender told educators to wait and see what's tabled.
"They don't know the details of what a 10-year deal might be, so I think what they need to do is be patient, allow their leadership to sit down with us in a spirit of cooperation and collaboration, and let us go back and tell them what a long-term deal looks like," he said.
Teachers across the province took a vote to gauge their collective feelings about government's "interference in bargaining" and 96 per cent were against Fassbender's approach.
Teachers also wrote letters en masse to Fassbender talking about their concerns that his government "intended to lock in a decade of deteriorating conditions in classrooms" with the new deal, according to a press release from the BCTF.
Sunshine Coast Teachers' Association (SCTA) president Louise Herle told Coast Reporter this week that government's proposed 10-year deal is "flawed in a number of significant ways."
"It ignores court rulings, contradicts government's own legislation and puts at risk the current round of provincial bargaining. It severely limits the constitutional right to bargain and intrudes into the bargaining process yet again," Herle said. "Another key problem is that it ignores the ruling of the BC Supreme Court that teachers have the right to bargain working conditions, such as class size and class composition."
Despite the concerns, teachers are saying they still want to bargain with government, and Fassbender noted government is also willing to get back to the table.
"They said they want to take the summer break from bargaining, so we're ready to work with them whenever they're ready to come to the table, and we'll develop that framework," he said.
