The Marxist-Leninist Daily

On February 16, Bill 20, Auditor General for Local Government Act, passed second reading in the British Columbia Legislature in a vote of 41 to 32. The three-day debate between Liberal government members and the NDP opposition threw little light on the purpose of the new law.

Premier Christie Clark first made an issue of promoting such a bill in a speech to the BC Chamber of Commerce when she was running for the Liberal Party leadership. The Canadian Federation of Independent Business then expressed support for such an office. This idea took further form when Clark announced her "Families First Agenda/Review Municipal Taxation" saying:

- Create an Office of the Municipal Auditor General
- Fund the office as part of the Auditor General's Office. The office will provide advice on financial decisions and provide a measure of accountability.
- Review the municipal taxation formula
- Work with the Union of B.C. Municipalities to ensure municipalities are properly funded and communities can provide the services British Columbians want from local governments."

The last sentence is full of empty words, as municipalities faced with ever more responsibilities downloaded on to them, are pushed to increase property taxes while cutting services.

An important feature of Bill 20 is how ministerial power is enhanced. The office is specifically not part of the Auditor General's Office. The Auditor General for Local Government (AGLG) is to be selected by the Minister, who will appoint an "Audit Council" of "no fewer than 5 members" with the chair also to be selected by the Minister. The Council will then set its own remuneration and oversee the work of the AGLG. Start up cost is $2.6 million. The AGLG must submit any "proposed final report to the Audit Council before finalizing."

When Ida Chong, Minister of Community, Sports and Cultural Development first introduced Bill 20 on November 24, 2011, she made comments that give a strong clue as to where the government intends to go with this legislation.

She said, "The auditor general for local government would conduct performance audits -- what we often refer to as value-for-money audits -- on a number of local governments each year and make those results public. The purpose of a performance audit is to review the economy, the efficiency and the effectiveness of a local government's implementation of programs, services and other activities. By creating an office of the auditor general for local government, this bill is intended to support local governments in their stewardship of community assets.

"The auditor general for local government would provide neutral professional advice about how local governments can strengthen their practices. The position would also provide another measure of transparency and accountability for taxpayers." (Emphasis added)

Chong repeated neoliberal catchphrases that signal a forthcoming attack on public sector workers, deemed "too high a cost," and to prepare conditions to privatize public services in order to make them "more affordable."

Workers who have followed the debacle of this neoliberal agenda in Britain, other European states, Latin America and right here in Canada, including British Columbia, know this path is a recipe for further unemployment, insecurity, reduction in services, attacks on workers' rights and an increasing handover of public assets to wealthy corporations. Bill 20 is more pay-the-rich politics.

Around the time Clark made the proposal for an AGLG, Ken Boessenkool was her campaign manager in her run for the Liberal leadership. December 13, 2010 Public Eye On Line published his email to Clark's campaign stating that the Prime Minister's Office instructed paid staff of the national Conservative federal campaign team to "refrain from taking formal positions in the leadership campaigns for the BC Liberal Party." As Boessenkool had a "senior role on the national Conservative campaign team," he resigned as Clark's campaign manager saying, "I trust our paths will cross again."[1]

The "crossing paths again" occurred in mid-January 2012 when Premier Christie Clark announced that Boessenkool would become her chief of staff for around $200,000 a year starting February 15, the day before Bill 20 was adopted in second reading.

The Harper-Boessenkool-Clark axis of neoliberal reaction has serious repercussions for the working class of BC, especially public sector workers at both the provincial and municipal levels.

As provincial public sector workers are now engaged in a locked-horns "negotiation" with a Clark government insisting on a zero-wage increase, it is important to remember that Boessenkool together with Ben Eisen wrote a paper in January 2012 attacking the wages of Alberta public sector workers. (See TML Daily, February 15, 2012 - No. 18.) Eisen, who is frequently quoted in the monopoly-owned media, is a researcher and publicist for the Frontier Centre for Public Policy (FCPP) in Winnipeg, a "think-tank" similar to the Fraser Institute. Eisen played a role in launching a major attack on the wages, benefits and pensions of federal public sector workers just after Harper's May 2011 election.Thus, it is not speculation to assert that the establishment of the AGLG under Bill 20 is part of the neoliberal assault on municipal workers and the services they provide. One only has to witness the attacks by the Toronto Ford regime on civic workers and public services to grasp what is being planned for municipalities under the Clark government.

A feature of the attacks by the federal and provincial governments is to download the cost of programs onto municipalities despite their narrow tax base. To exacerbate the crisis, provincial governments are dictating ever more tightly how municipalities should spend their money. Under the anarchic Canadian constitution (BNA Act 1867, renamed the Constitution Act, 1867 following the passage of the Constitution Act, 1982) cities in Canada, despite being the places where most Canadians live, have no juridical authority. The provinces have complete authority over cities and dictate how they are governed.

Anticipating a further attack on municipal governments, the Union of British Columbia Municipalities (UBCM) released in July 2011 their Municipal Auditor General Context Paper pointing out that municipalities in BC are already under strict provincial authority and accountability. Municipalities must have a five-year plan and limit expenditures to that plan. Local governments cannot budget for a deficit, undertake long term borrowing for operations and there are limits on aggregate liabilities and/or debt servicing. Municipalities are externally audited and must provide reports as required by Council, Board or Inspector, or on an auditor's initiative. Many meetings are open. There is financial and performance reporting, as well as specific expenditure reporting.

Local government also has third party oversight by an Ombudsperson and Inspector of Municipalities (binding orders). If a local government is not in compliance, the Council or Board can be replaced by a Commissioner. In comparing the accountability systems of the Province versus local government, the UBCM Context Paper notes:

"The Provincial system relies more heavily on performance measurement and performance auditing; but the local government system is heavily reliant on statutory limitations imposed by the Province, and Provincial oversight roles, including the Inspector of Municipalities."

In other words, the provinces are less held to account than the municipalities under present legislation. The only reason the Clark government is spending $2.6 million to establish the AGLG is to open an offensive against municipal workers and their unions and to privatize public services even further, just as the previous Campbell government did to attack hospital workers, teachers and all other public sector workers and to promote privatization throughout its neoliberal rule from 2001 to 2011.

Bill 20, the Auditor General for Local Government Act, is a reactionary piece of legislation and the BC workers' opposition should vigorously expose and oppose it.

Community Health Workers Determined to
Defend Their Rights

The contract covering 13,000 BC community health care workers expires March 31. An association of unions that represents the 13,000 workers includes the BC Government and Service Employees' Union (BCGEU), Hospital Employees' Union, the United Food and Commercial Workers' Union Local 1518, the Canadian Union of Public Employees, Health Sciences Association of BC and the United Steelworkers Union.

Union members are determined to defend their right to wages commensurate with the important services they provide society. Those workers include home support workers, care aids, housekeepers, food service workers, licensed practical nurses, emergency shelter workers, as well as administrative and clerical workers.

More than 200 companies, associations and health authorities employing the workers are represented by the Health Employers Association of BC (HEABC). The HEABC negotiators are playing a stalling game, refusing to make any proposals indicating that they are waiting for a government imposed contract.

During the present two-year contract, the workers have received no wage increase as the provincial Liberal government dictated zero wage increases. Small improvements in the contract such as a 25-cent-an-hour premium for weekend work were accompanied by cuts elsewhere such as to the medical plan. The provincial government is presenting exactly the same scenario this time around.

A union official estimates that the workers lost five per cent of their real wages to inflation during the current contract. During the previous four-year contract from 2006 to 2010, the workers received about two per cent a year in wage increases plus a "signing bonus," which was not incorporated into regular wages. The contract before that saw the workers take a wage cut under the threat that their jobs would be contracted out. The workers were also forced to accept a two-year delay in the start-up of a negotiated pension plan.

The present negotiations are being conducted at a time of privatization and cuts to public health care. In the past year, several dozen group homes for "developmentally disabled adults" have been closed and the long-term residents forced into foster homes. The Harper government has set limits on transfer payments to the provinces that will result in further erosion of public health care and the increase of U.S.-style for-profit health care.

At the BCGEU bargaining conference in December 2011, members identified wage increases, job security, benefits and scheduling as their main contract priorities.

Health care workers in BC are determined not to be driven further into impoverishment and demand the dignity of wages and working conditions that reflect the necessary services they provide.

Support Malaspina Gardens Workers' Fight to
Stop Contracting Out!

Signs at rally to support workers at Malaspina Gardens, February 3, 2012.
(Fight Contracting Out at Malaspina Gardens)

Malaspina Gardens is a private seniors' residential care facility in Nanaimo on Vancouver Island. It is one of 14 residences in BC owned by Chartwell Real Estate Investment Trust, a Mississauga, Ontario-based company that owns and operates over 180 seniors' residences in Canada and the U.S.

Malaspina Gardens has been operating for more than 30 years. Chartwell acquired it along with other seniors' residences in 2005, when the company purchased CPAC (Care) Holdings Ltd.

Around the time of the Chartwell purchase in 2005, the Vancouver Island Health Authority (VIHA), which provides funding to the facility, promised to provide the new owners with money to upgrade the residence. However, all the "new investments" made by VIHA in 2006 went into new private, for-profit residences in several communities on Vancouver Island.

The provincial Liberal government, while boasting of providing 5,000 "new" beds for seniors gave rise to fewer than 5,000 total residential beds for seniors -- the lower cost and lower-serviced "assisted living"-type beds. During this time, the government arranged with several different private contractors to open new facilities while closing existing longstanding public facilities. The government told the owners of Malaspina Gardens that they would no longer receive any funds to upgrade.

In October 2011, Chartwell notified the Hospital Employees' Union and the BC Nurses' Union that work at Malaspina Gardens would be contracted out. The two unions represent Malaspina Gardens' care staff including health care workers, licensed practical nurses, activity workers, physiotherapist assistants, clerical and maintenance workers and registered nurses.

Chartwell told the unions that contracting out was a condition required by the VIHA in order to fund necessary upgrades. The company in cahoots with the government plans to fire a seasoned and stable workforce, some of whom have been there since the residence opened more than 30 years ago. Altogether 177 people are affected, including all unionized staff and all but two management staff. Those workers presently receive BC-standard health care wages and benefits similar to those of care staff in hospitals throughout BC. BC-standard wages, benefits and working conditions fall under the provincial agreement between the Facilities Bargaining Association (the unions) and the Health Employers Association of British Columbia.

Although the existing collective agreements provide for a period of "negotiations" to find alternatives to contracting out, Chartwell did not appear to take the consultation phase seriously and no arrangement with the unions was achieved. Layoff notices were issued on January 3, with an effective date of July 3.

Malaspina Gardens' workers, residents and families have been organizing to stop the layoffs right from the beginning and several rallies have been held at the residence. The next is scheduled for March 3, followed by a public meeting at Vancouver Island University March 6, and another action March 27.

The workers, residents, families and many allies throughout BC are determined to defend their loved ones' home, the workers and the working and caring conditions at Malaspina Gardens and reverse this anti-worker anti-social contracting out.

Interview

- Kathleen Watson, Malaspina Mid Island Local Chair,
Hospital Employees' Union -

Kathleen Watson: Friday of the Thanksgiving long weekend, the Hospital Employees' Union (HEU) received a letter stating that Chartwell Real Estate Investment Trust intended to outsource the care staff; in other words, to contract out.

So we then had 60 days to negotiate with the employer -- in good faith. In that time the employer canceled four meetings.

In the end the employer said that the reason they were contracting out was because they want to keep the building sustainable. They have to save money and labour costs was one of the ways to do that.

On February 3, the Local held an information rally in front of Malaspina Gardens to give out information on seniors' care, what's happening to seniors' care and draw attention to the contracting out at the facility.

Workers, family members, people from the community and even residents came out. Workers from Glacier View Lodge and St. Joseph's in Comox travelled to attend, along with workers from Travellers Lodge in Nanaimo, Nanaimo Hospital and other places.

HEU President Ken Robinson, family council and seniors' advocate Kim Slater and local NDP MLA Leonard Krog attended and spoke to the crowd.

We spoke to the Nanaimo and District Labour Council on February 15 to get their support for our big rally set for March 27 at 2:00 pm. We are going to march from Malaspina Gardens to Swy-A-Lana Lagoon and we're asking people to come and join our walk.

TML: Contracting out has been used at a lot of Vancouver Island seniors' homes in the last few years. Is there anything different about your situation?

KW: Every situation is unique in its own way. We thought it couldn't happen here.

Our housekeeping, laundry and kitchen staff were contracted out several years ago, shortly after Bill 29, and are non-union still. [Bill 29 was the 2002 Health and Social Services Delivery Improvement Act. In 2007 the Supreme Court ruled that sections of this bill restricting the right to free collective bargaining contravened the right to freedom of association in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms -- TML Ed. Note]

But the health care workers, activity aids, physiotherapy assistants, clerical and maintenance workers and licensed practical nurses, 154 in all, have been continuing to earn the same wages as our sisters and brothers in hospitals.

That's because, unlike most care homes, HEU members in direct resident care at Malaspina were part of the Facilities Bargaining Association and not under a separate, independent collective agreement.

Now it does seem that independent residential facilities -- private for-profit operations for the most part -- are definitely on the contracting out hit list.

Acacia Ty Mawr Lodge in Shawnigan Lake, another privately-owned facility, got slammed right after us. Forty people there will lose their jobs.

KW: One hundred and seventy-seven people -- the health care workers, activity aides, physiotherapist assistants, clerical and maintenance workers and licensed practical nurses in HEU and registered nurses in the BCNU -- and some managerial positions. In fact everyone, union and management, except for two managerial positions.

Of course, the residents are affected, too. In terms of the resistance to the contracting out, the families are really incredible. They even have their own Facebook group (Fight Contracting Out at Malaspina Gardens) where you can join and they tell you what's happening, who to get in contact with, where to write letters.

KW: No, some of our workers have been here over 30 years. I've been here 20 years. Lots of workers have been here a long time and that's one of the reasons that families want their loved ones here. They look at how long employees have worked here. They take into consideration how long people have worked there and they think it must be a good place.

The families have been writing letters, trying to make the community aware, and when we have rallies and other activities, they are right there.

We organize our actions and they support us, and they organize their actions and we support them. The families' involvement is critical.

The work of family councils is really important. They were instrumental in ending the contracting out at Nanaimo Seniors Village. That contract was flipped four times. Four times all the workers were laid off and some new workers hired, and the family council there was huge in putting an end to that.

TML: Chartwell owns 14 residences in BC. Is this happening in any of the others?

KW: Malaspina Gardens is the only Chartwell residence on Vancouver Island and we are the only workers under the facilities contract.

I know that at least one of Chartwell's other facilities is unionized, Langley Gardens in the Lower Mainland. They are under an independent agreement.

Besides the rally on March 27, there will be a rally in front of Malaspina Gardens on March 3. After the rally, we'll disperse in groups and we're going to go out into the public and hand out flyers to promote our next event, a public screening of the documentary film on seniors' care in BC, The Remaining Light.

The Remaining Light will be shown and then there will be a panel discussion. That's on March 6 at Vancouver Island University. There was a screening in Comox last year and it was very well attended. And recently, at a showing in Parksville, the centre was packed. We're hoping for a good turnout on March 6.

Press Releases

Unions representing 43,000 B.C. health care workers [sat] down with employers and government to begin negotiations for a new collective agreement on February 6.

The Hospital Employees' Union (HEU) will lead the 12-union Facilities Bargaining Association (FBA) in talks aimed at improving working and caring conditions for a diverse range of workers.

HEU secretary-business manager Bonnie Pearson says that health workers are seeking improvements to their contract so that they do not fall further behind after a decade that saw the erosion of wages and attacks on their job security. The unions are also looking to improve health and safety measures in workplaces that are the most dangerous in the province in terms of injury rates and acts of violence.

Pearson says, "Our side is looking forward to getting into some substantial discussion on issues that matter to our members and that will contribute to a stronger health care system. And we will challenge health employers and government to make a fair and reasonable investment in those who deliver health care to British Columbians under difficult circumstances."

The FBA represents the largest single group of B.C. public sector workers heading to the table in the current round of negotiations for contracts expiring March 31, 2012. The talks cover health care workers in hospitals, residential care facilities and in consolidated health services shared across multiple health employers, as well as the B.C. Ambulance Service.

The diverse bargaining unit of more than 270 job classifications includes care aides, licensed practical nurses, ambulance paramedics, health records staff, laboratory and other diagnostic specialists, sterile supply technicians, emergency dispatch personnel, trades and maintenance workers, activity aides and rehab assistants, IT specialists, pharmacy technicians, admitting and booking clerks, administrative staff, cleaning and dietary staff, and many others.

The HEU represents about 85 per cent of the members covered by the talks. Another 14 per cent are represented by the Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 873, the B.C. Government and Service Employees' Union and International Union of Operating Engineers Local 882/882H.

Other FBA unions represent about one per cent of workers covered by the talks. They are the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades District Council 38; Pulp, Paper and Woodworkers of Canada Local 5; B.C. Nurses' Union; Construction and Specialized Workers Union Local 1611; International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 230; United Association of Plumbers and Pipefitters Local 324; United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America and United Steelworkers of America Local 9705.

The FBA is one of several public sector union groups currently at the table negotiating agreements for more than 200,000 workers.

Malaspina Gardens' Workers Coming Events

Rally Against Contracting Out
Saturday, March 3 -- 11:00 am
Malaspina Gardens, 388 Macleary St., Nanaimo

Film Screening: "The Remaining Light"
Tuesday, March 6 -- 6:30 pm
Vancouver Island University, Nanaimo, Auditorium 356,
Documentary and panel discussion on seniors' care in BC.

March and Rally
Tuesday, March 27, -- 2:00 pm
Walk from Malaspina Gardens through downtown Nanaimo to Swy-a-Lana Lagoon on the waterfront where there will be speeches, bands, food. Bring signs, banners and noisemakers!
Organized by: HEU, residents and families

Support Malaspina Gardens' workers, residents and families in defence of their rights to Canadian-standard wages, benefits, working conditions, health care and seniors' residences! Attend the rallies and events!

Stop Contracting Out Workers' Livelihoods and Privatization of Health and Seniors' Care!

New Assault on Teachers and Public Education

BC teachers rally against back-to-work legislation outside the provincial legislature in 2005. (BC Indymedia)

On February 9, the BC government stepped up its attack on kindergarten to grade 12 (K-12) teachers by appointing a "fact finder" to see if a bargained solution to the present dispute in the public K-12 education sector is possible. Assistant Deputy Labour Minister Trevor Hughes will meet with the BC Teachers' Federation (BCTF) and the BC Public School Employers' Association over a two-week period and provide a report to Labour Minister Margaret MacDiarmid by February 23. The provincial government feigns that it is representing the "public interest" by acting to end a partial job action of teachers ongoing since September and posturing as "concerned" about providing public education to the province's youth.

That the "fact finder" is none other than the very person at the negotiating table who has insisted that a settlement with teachers must be based on a "net zero" wage increase shows that the government has every intention of yet again legislating teachers back to work and negating their collective bargaining rights.

The "net zero" wage settlement is a real decrease in their standard of living, placing BC teachers far behind their colleagues in Alberta, where working conditions and public education are under attack and facing cutbacks.

Thus, far from representing the public interest, government is pushing its neoliberal agenda of cutting social programs, depoliticizing public interests and promoting private interests that are steadily taking over education in BC. An ever larger proportion of BC government funds are regularly allotted for private K-12 education in the province as the politicization of private interests continues apace in all sectors of the economy.

The "net-zero" neoliberal nonsense of the BC government is an aspect of the overall agenda to cause turmoil in the public sector, attack public sector workers as overpaid troublemakers, destroy their trade unions and livelihoods, and privatize all that is "not nailed down."

To paraphrase an article by Sandra L. Smith, "The Politicizing of Private Interests, Depoliticizing of Public Interests and Destruction of Public Assets," the BC legislature, as a powerful institution of the state, is being used to destroy the sovereign public institutions and ensure that the most powerful private interests trump all other interests. The BC legislature has been hijacked to enact legislation that favours private not public interests. This can be characterized as the destruction of the sovereign decision-making power as a result of the politicization of private interests and depoliticizing of public interests in BC.[1]

The public interest with regard to education, represented by the teachers, students, support workers, parents and school boards has been stripped of political leverage. They have no political authority to ensure the right to quality public education for all, including special needs children, Indigenous youth, small communities etc. nor how that right should be implemented and financed. All authority over education budgets and the wages, benefits and working conditions of teachers and other education workers who are the human factor within the students' learning conditions has been centralized in the provincial ministry of education and its prerogative.

The teachers have organized resistance against this ongoing trend to undermine public education. In September 2011, 60 per cent of the provinces 41,000 teachers participated in a vote for a BC Teachers' Federation proposed partial strike. Ninety per cent -- 28,128 teachers -- said yes. Since September, teachers have withdrawn from certain administrative tasks including filling out report cards.

Teachers have been actively informing the public that since 2002 over 200 schools have been closed with 3,700 fewer teaching positions available than warranted by any decrease in enrolment. The year 2002 saw the newly-elected Liberal government launch a savage attack on the teachers' previous contract, especially with regard to class room teaching conditions. In January 2002, Bills 27 and 28 were passed by then Education Minister, now BC Premier, Christy Clark, which cut approximately $275 million in education funding -- $331 million in today's dollars, according to the BCTF. They destroyed the classroom working conditions bargained by teachers over several decades thus increasing workloads, cutting back special education workers, psychologists, speech therapists, ESL programs etc.

Despite a BC Supreme Court ruling that Bills 27 and 28 were unconstitutional and gave the government until this year to rectify the violation, the government says it is now "negotiating" with the teachers by upholding and imposing all the cuts! In other words, they are pushing the same politicization of private interests, attacking a key social program, but are doing so "constitutionally" by implementing the residual powers of the premier's and ministers' offices, only now through the sham of "negotiations" and "collective bargaining."

Teachers are fighting to enhance education opportunities for the children and youth. At the same time, they also need to raise teachers' income, especially for the majority who live in the high cost Lower Mainland area and many remote communities. BC teachers' salaries, which have not been raised in real terms for 20 years, lag behind their colleagues across the country.

Attacks on public education have been unfolding since the late 1980s under the Social Credit government and continued through the 1990s under the NDP governments. An important facet of the attack on public education has been the shifting of provincial funds to finance religious and private K-12 students, something British Columbia had prohibited in the post-World War Two period, as education came to be acknowledged especially in the 1960s period as a key part of the social welfare state.

In 1987 a Royal Commission, headed by Barry Sullivan, was created by the Social Credit government to justify the public financing of private schools in BC. This was during the period when the neoliberal agenda of finance capital headed by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan was assaulting the social welfare state.

The NDP government of Michael Harcourt elected in 1990 enacted legislation recommended by the Sullivan Commission formalizing the era of public financing of private education in BC. At the time, both the BCTF and the Canadian Union of Public Employees-BC lobbied the government strongly opposing this act and argued for a continuation of public funding only for public schools. Since then the trend has been to privatize an increasing amount of education.

All told, BC taxpayers spent just over $200 million in 2008-2009 to support 319 private schools, plus another $41 million to private "distributed learning" schools and $25.4 million in special education grants to qualifying students in Group 1 and Group 2 schools. The BCTF says funding to private schools has risen by 34 per cent while public-school funding has risen by just 13 per cent.[2]

Meanwhile public education has been under continuous pressure from provincial governments since the 1990s to cut real funding to education in a number of ways. One method is to increase available money at a slower pace than the amount necessary to run the schools. This is evident in the period from 2005 to 2011, which the government continually refers to as proof that it is not starving public education. According to government figures, available money went up during that period from $7,097 to $8,381 per-student. However, when the amount necessary to run the schools is factored in, the operating grant per student fell from $6,409 in 2005 to $6,289 in 2010-11.[3]

Other statistical evidence is found in the falling percentage of the provincial budget directed towards education. This indicates the government's lower priority for education as public money is shifted to other sectors. In 1991, education took 26 per cent of the provincial budget; in 2000-01, it fell to 20 per cent, and in 2010 to just 15 per cent.

It is within a context of two decades of continuous cuts to one of the key social pillars in BC, public K-12 education, that one can appreciate the efforts of the BCTF to organize their resistance and partial strike. They face not only an intransigent government that has politicized private interests seeking to profit through an ongoing shift of public money from public to private education, but also a highly monopolized media inciting opinion against the teachers, and misinforming the public about their resistance and the attacks on public education. In the course of the teachers' struggle, however, parents in some communities have mobilized themselves in support of the teachers and their cause for increasing funding for education to ensure quality education as a right for all BC citizens and residents.

The government's move to illegalize the teachers' present partial strike with the appointment as a "fact finder" of the very person in negotiations pushing the government's line of net-zero, has no place in good faith bargaining as it has no connection with the reality of BC's economy and the general interests of society. It is simply a neoliberal concept pulled out of the air to justify attacking teachers, public education and all other public sector workers. The aim of the government is to criminalize the main social force fighting for the public interest in defending education. This underlines the need for the rest of the public to take up the cause of the right to quality education as their own and to support the teachers' just struggle for more provincial government financing for education and the recognition of their rights. A powerful workers' opposition to the government's neoliberal attacks on public education and its criminalizing of teachers and their union can guarantee education as a right for all.

Teachers Want a Fair Deal

Jock Finlayson of the Business Council of BC doesn't think BC teachers should get a salary increase that would help them catch up, even a little, with teachers in other provinces. Finlayson characterizes the BCTF salary proposal as a "substantial boost." Can a proposal that calls for a cost of living increase, in effect a salary freeze, in the first year be characterized as a substantial boost? Government's net-zero policy means an equivalent cut in pay. Should we then characterize the net zero government policy as a substantial cut in pay for the province's teachers?

The BC Public School Employers' Association is at the bargaining table offering nothing while demanding deep contract concessions. Surely even Finlayson would concede that is no way to get a deal.

Statistics Canada reports that between 2000 to 2010, where teachers took two net-zero years, public sector salaries in BC rose by 16.9% while inflation increased by 19%. Teachers' salaries have declined not only in relationship to colleagues across the country but in terms of real purchasing power here at home.

Finlayson cites average salaries to assert that BC teachers rank fourth in pay amongst the 10 provinces, but actual salaries tell a different story.

Beginning teachers in Vancouver with five years of university start $5,000 behind their counterparts in Regina and Winnipeg, and $13,000 behind those in Calgary.

At the top of the salary scale, Victoria teachers with five years of university earn $15,000 less than teachers in Toronto, and $20,000 less than those in Lethbridge.

One-quarter of BC teachers have masters degrees, and here again the wage gap is significant. Experienced Vancouver teachers with a masters earn $13,000 less than they would in Ottawa, and $17,000 less than in Edmonton.

Starting salaries for teachers in BC rank 8th or 9th lowest out of the 10 provinces, depending on years of education, while maximum salaries rank 6th to 8th lowest. Contrary to what Finlayson states, these rankings do not include the Territories. Our assertion that BC teachers rank 9th in Canada is an accurate one.

Finlayson further argues against a fair salary increase because there is no teacher shortage in BC. But due to Liberal cuts there are 3,500 fewer teaching positions and 15,000 classes over the government's own class-size and composition limits; powerful indicators of the shortage of teachers in classrooms.

In 1991-92 the Ministry of Education's budget was 26% of the provincial budget. By 2009-10 it had shrunk to 15%. By contrast, the Alberta government currently spends 30% of its provincial budget on education.

Since government illegally tore up teachers' collective agreements in 2002, we have seen massive divestment from public education in BC. Over $3 billion has been cut from the education budget to pay for the 25% tax cut that so richly benefits Finlayson's Business Council members.

Finlayson also argues against a salary increase saying that teachers enjoy good holidays and a well-funded pension plan. In fact, teachers do not get paid over the summer and they do pay for their pensions, contributing over 10% of salary from the very first day of teaching.

BC teachers work on average 48 hours per week, which adds up to an additional 10 weeks per school year. Many take summer jobs to pay off student loans or to make ends meet for their families. Thousands of teachers return to university during the summer to improve their skills and better meet their students' needs. Teachers also subsidize the system by spending thousands of their own dollars on classroom supplies.

Despite a wage freeze for 2004 and 2005, followed by modest increases in the last five years, BC teachers' salaries, benefits, and working conditions have fallen far behind those of other teachers across the country.

But BC teachers aren't asking to catch up to other teachers across Canada in a year or even over three years. We're just saying that it's time this government put resources back into public schools, addressed the problems of class size and composition, and made a fair offer to help teachers keep up with inflation and catch up a bit with other teachers across the country.

Government Prepares Conditions for Further Privatization and Assault on Public Workers

Government Prepares Conditions for Further Privatization and Assault on Public Workers

Community Health Workers Determined to
Defend Their Rights

Support Malaspina Gardens Workers' Fight to
Stop Contracting Out!

Interview

Press Releases

Malaspina Gardens' Workers Coming Events

New Assault on Teachers and Public Education

Teachers Want a Fair Deal

Government Prepares Conditions for Further Privatization and Assault on Public Workers

Government Prepares Conditions for Further Privatization and Assault on Public Workers

Community Health Workers Determined to Defend Their Rights

Support Malaspina Gardens Workers' Fight to Stop Contracting Out!

Interview

Press Releases

Malaspina Gardens' Workers Coming Events

New Assault on Teachers and Public Education

Teachers Want a Fair Deal

Community Health Workers Determined to
Defend Their Rights

Support Malaspina Gardens Workers' Fight to
Stop Contracting Out!