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March 16, 2012 - No. 37 British Columbia Teachers Defend Their Rights and Public Education Teachers, students and their supporters rally in Vancouver, March 7, 2012. • Teachers
Defend Their Rights and Public
Education Teachers Defend Their Rights and Public Education   (BC Fed) The BC Teachers' Federation is now engaged in the longest job action ever in its history. Teachers are fighting to recover contract language governing class size and composition illegally stripped from teachers' contracts and to settle on wages and benefits suitable to themselves and their peers across the country rather than the unilateral "net-zero" dictate of the Liberal government. The Liberal government has attacked teachers and public education with Bills 28 and 29 in 2002 by then Education Minister Christy Clark (the current Premier) and now with Bill 22. Education Minister George Abbott has introduced Bill 22 to criminalize any further teacher job action and impose a "mediator" whose mandate includes the infamous and arbitrary net-zero dictate for teachers' salaries and any other aspect of bargaining that may involve revenue. This anti-social dictate not only fails to recover lost teacher wages but further drives down real income compared with the annual inflation of the cost of living and fails to solve any of the real problems of class size and composition, which are the learning conditions of BC's public students.
The times are calling on the people to defend the public good and society guided by a human-centred outlook of "one for all, all for one." A human-centred outlook is necessary in a modern society with a socialized economy of industrial mass production. In contrast, a tiny minority of billionaire owners of capital such as Jimmy Pattison and others, many not even resident in BC, together with their political representatives in Victoria and Ottawa are dictating their capital-centred vision of "fend for yourself and devil take the hindmost." Government is being subverted to that of an instrument of private profit, privatizing public interests and assets and destroying society. This must not pass! The struggle of teachers is a significant part of the battle between the human-centred and capital-centred outlooks and visions for the future. Stand with teachers in their battle for their rights, public education and a modern conception of society in the service of all! Stop
Paying
the
rich!
Increase
Investments in Social Programs! (Photos: BC Fed, BCGEU)
Discussing a Way Forward for Teachers and BC BC Teachers' Federation Annual General Meeting, March 17-20Delegates from over 90 locals of the BCTF representing 43,000 school teachers from Kindergarten to Grade 12, including adult learners are gathering for their Annual General Meeting (AGM) at the Vancouver Hyatt Hotel from Saturday March 17 through Tuesday March 20.
The vision of unfettered individualism, the ego-centred "I" of the rich, has set itself the task of shredding what is left of social programs, especially public health care and education. The vision of the people centred on the human factor/social consciousness has set itself the task of defending the rights of all and the general interests of society, which includes importantly the right to education. The BC polity is increasingly aware that the rich use the state to privatize public interests, institutions and assets, and politicize their private interests. Politicizing private interests includes legislation to attack the rights of workers such as Bill 22 and the Harper government's back-to-work orders against Air Canada workers, the anti-social mantra of "net-zero" to reduce debt and deficits, the reduction of corporate income tax and increasing individual taxation such as the discredited HST, promotion of private education and health care, privatization of water, hydro and other necessary services, open markets for private insurers and "providers" of health care, senior's care, private contract labour monopolies and other aspects of the neoliberal agenda. Through their control of the Legislature and Parliament using surrogates such as the Liberal and Conservative parties, the rich routinely criminalize the resistance of unionized workers whether they are teachers or airline mechanics. The people face these attacks amidst a constant monopolized media tirade against trade unions or any collective struggling for the rights of its members and against so-called "entitlements" as defined by the Christy Clark and Stephen Harper neoliberals who dominate the political class in governments.
Assaults on the rights of public sector workers are coupled with similar assaults against workers in the private sector. Workers and their unions have been under unprecedented attack from both the economic crisis, especially in the wood industry, and the union breaking activities of billionaires like Jimmy Pattison and developers who together with neoliberal governments at all levels have undermined unionization in key sectors such as construction.
To be discussed is the way forward for teachers in the battle to defend their rights and public education, faced as they are with the criminalization of their struggle in Bill 22. The teachers are determined to break new ground in this complex situation. With their continued resistance, they are making a significant contribution to the overall hopes and determination of the working class to build a powerful Workers' Opposition and find a way forward against the anti-social policies and practices of the rich and their governments. The Canadian working class, of which BC teachers form an important contingent, is finding its bearings all across the country in this historic battle to defend the rights of all and politicize public interests. Workers are deepening their understanding of the way forward by actively participating in class struggle. TML will attend the BC teachers' AGM, interview participants and keep readers abreast of the discussions, resolutions and key developments. Social Significance of Teachers' Struggle President of the BC Teachers' Federation Susan Lambert addresses mass rally in support of teachers at provincial Legislature in Victoria, March 6, 2012. A trend has emerged very clearly from the recent struggle waged by BC teachers. The parents, student youth and communities actively support teachers and public education. The struggle to defend teachers' rights and public education has mobilized people to take to the streets and discuss the political and economic direction for BC. The walkout and rally March 2 of some 1,500 high school students in Vancouver in the pouring rain was evidence of this trend. On March 6, many youth and workers attended the rally of 8,000 teachers and their allies in Victoria. The following day several thousand people gathered to express their support for teachers and public education in downtown Vancouver and many more held rallies and meetings across BC throughout the week.
Moreover, anyone reviewing the assault on public education in a non-biased way would acknowledge that serious attacks on the financing of public education, the imposition of provincial bargaining and the consolidation of the funneling of public funds to owners of private education took place under an NDP government in the 1990s. The over two-decade long undermining of public education and attacks on teachers reveal that the defeat of the Liberal government can only take place within the context of a sharp resistance to the content of the neoliberal program and a determined struggle to hold to account in words and deeds all elected representatives to serve the public good and interests and oppose the politiczing of private interests.
Teachers through their many links, for example in the Lower Mainland with the numerous national minority communities -- Chinese, Punjabi, Vietnamese, Filipino etc -- can engage the parents and grandparents of their schoolchildren in bilingual and even trilingual community meetings and help make our varied communities of mostly working class people feel the presence of progressive and enlightened opinion in BC, which is striving to bring about the unity of all working people for a better society based on the principle of one for all, all for one. Many of those working class people are marginalized and made to feel even more isolated and impotent than the rest of the working people. Their greatest hopes are often expressed in the desire that their children receive a quality education in the public system. By connecting with them through community discussions and showing them that teachers are in the forefront of defending public education and the rights of all, teachers can be a catalyst for renewing and developing public discourse on the problems confronting the society and raising the level of political conversation throughout the entire province. The same is the case in the smaller communities on the Island, north coast, plateau region, northeast etc where the crisis in the forest industry cries out for a new direction for the economy and the old colonial system still punishes and excludes First Nations' youth from gaining full benefits from public education. The challenges and possibilities for leading the people towards progress and social development face BC teachers. They are linked in myriad ways with the entire working population of the province through the parents and grandparents of the children they teach. The teachers are seen to be fighters for a just cause: the right to education, public education and the public good. They have placed on their banner the demand of the population for increased investments in social programs and to stop paying the rich. Moreover, the working members of the BCTF have a powerful reserve force in the form of the energey and experience of their retirees. Hundreds if not thousands of retired BC teachers can be mobilized to organize public discussions around the province. BCTF also has the resources and energy of its young dynamic activist members who have taken the lead during the mass actions. A powerful force for energizing a necessary public debate on the way forward for BC is at hand.
A lively, optimistic and forward-looking debate amongst
the tens of thousands of teachers and their allies on the direction of
the economic and political affairs of BC is taking place. This
discussion has every possibility to be a major boost to building a
broad Workers' Opposition to the Clark government and
all others who push the discredited anti-social neoliberal agenda.
(Photos: BCTF, BC Fed, Murray
Bush/Media Coop) Clashing Issues Between Teachers and Clark Government Education Minister's Social Irresponsibility
Teachers' working conditions are the learning conditions for the youth of our society. For decades, teaches have bargained class size and composition, forsaking wage increases to improve learning and working conditions. Minister Abbott ignores the reality of high-quality public education going hand-in-hand with a modern, innovative and forward-looking society. Instead, he dehumanizes BC's youth and students, turning them into commodities that can "earn" a teacher additional wages. A race to the bottom can be seen with this kind of "incentive." It ratchets up the neoliberal assault on all social programs and public services and on the human-centred "all for one, one for all" notion of society and replaces it with the malevolent capital-centred Thatcherite idea that "there is no such thing as society; there's only the market place." On March 9, BCTF President Susan Lambert spoke to this attack on society: "This pay-per-student scheme is like educational piece-work, it treats students like widgets. It's like a 19th century factory model.... For decades, teachers have been advocating for smaller classes so we can provide the individual attention that helps children thrive in school. In all that time, we have never asked for increased pay for larger classes because that wouldn't do anything to improve learning conditions for our students.... Any amount of money to the teacher won't make those overcrowded classrooms okay for kids. You simply can't teach to individual needs in overcrowded classrooms." Lambert said that paying teachers more per number of students over class size limits, "... is unethical. It treats students as a commodity to be traded off or bartered. This is an appalling idea from the Ministry of Education." Teachers are fighting for class size/composition guarantees because every student must be guaranteed a right to an education. This is not a right to sit in a classroom and be counted as "one more," it is a right to an education, which does not coincide with Mr. Abbott's conception. The Education Minister presents himself as more concerned with a net-zero financial outcome (less than net-zero if inflation is included) than with the learning conditions of the children and youth in the province. While offering financial
incentives to teachers if they take on more than 30 students per class,
Education In response BCTF President Lambert said, "It appears that the minister is using students as pawns to put pressure on school boards to rob funds from somewhere else to keep class sizes down. The education budget is frozen. With a $100 million funding shortfall for next year, it's clear boards are going to have to cut entire programs to fund this odious scheme." Class Size and CompositionWhen BC teacher bargaining took place at the local level, directly between School Boards and the union, the Vancouver Elementary School Teachers were known in the province to have bargained hard on class size and composition, giving up wage increases in the process. Before the introduction of provincial bargaining, teachers knew their class size maximums and weights for different compositions, for example at the Vancouver Elementary level: - Kindergarten, maximum 22 students; The additional planning, teaching, development and making of resources required for each situation was considered and class size adjusted if necessary. The situation has not advanced and for the most part has gone backwards, especially with the current neoliberal pressure. Presently, the maximums for Kindergarten and Grades 1 to 3 remain the same. The maximum for Grades 4 to 7 is now 30. Consideration for split classes is gone. Consideration for special needs as a direct reduction of one student less for each designated student is gone, replaced with the fudging of numbers. Grades 4 to 7 is a maximum 30 in the classroom, with special needs counting as an additional one per student, which could bring the total "number" in the classroom to 33. For example, if the classroom has 30 students, three of whom are designated, the class total is 33 and considered "full." If the classroom has 29 students including three designated students, the total is 32 and the class could accommodate another student but not another designated student. With this model, more than three designated students in a class reduces the total class size, but does not address the additional requirements placed on a teacher to ensure every student has an appropriate learning program. Modifying class size and composition, alleviating the obvious work-load pressures on a classroom teacher, such as split classes and the number of designated students, made sense 15 years ago and still makes sense today. To throw out class size and composition is to go back to the days when classes were huge and the teacher taught to the "middle." Students that needed additional assistance were left behind and those that could learn on their own did so to their capacity without assistance. Implementing backward pedagogical measures and starving public education of investment funds are medieval and lead directly to privatization and quality education for a shrinking number. A medievalist Premier and Education Minister with neoliberal thinking are the last things teachers and the people of BC need or want. Loss of School DaysBC Minister of Education Abbot insists teachers' legal job action must be stopped because students are losing days of instruction. To date, there have been three such days lost.
Large Boards, such as the Vancouver School Board, estimate a "saving" of approximately $1.5 million in not having to pay substitutes or sick pay for those 10 extra days when schools are closed. Pedagogical research does not support "improved educational outcomes" with fewer and longer school days. However, Mr. Abbott is silent on this practice. Could it be that the Minister of Education supports anything that reduces revenue for public education regardless of negative consequences for students, their learning conditions and the level of public education and society generally? A Minister of Education should at the very least serve public education and insist on the most modern, proven pedagogy. Mr. Abbott should be demanding increased investments in education to reduce class sizes, fill needed positions such as librarians, special needs teacher assistants., etc and make the learning experience the best possible for all students regardless of their personal circumstances. Abbott's crocodile tears over lost teaching days from job actions are shameless. (Photos: BCGEU, Murray Bush/Media Coop, BC Fed) Seniority and the "Mediator" with the
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The significance of the
struggle of the teachers to resist the attack on public education and
defend both the quality of classroom teaching for students and the
teachers' standard of living is of great importance to all residents of
British Columbia. At stake in this clash between the organized
resistance of the
teachers and the neoliberal agenda of the Liberal Clark government is
whether the dictate of the private monopolies for privatization of
public institutions and social programs overwhelms all public
institutions and assets or whether the teachers, together with other
public sector unions and united with workers throughout
the province can forge an opposition to this agenda, defend public
right and hold the Clark government to account.
The ongoing job actions of
teachers in defence of their
rights and public education, their recent three-day strike and the
Liberal government attempt to criminalize teachers with Bill 22 have
given rise to discussion of a clash of visions and outlook in BC.
The conversations and
debates during the BCTF AGM within
this situation of intense struggle to defend the rights of teachers and
public education have a significance and impact far beyond the
classrooms of the BC school system. The BCTF emerged in 1987 with full
trade union rights including the right to
strike. In 2002, a vigorous debate took place in the BCTF as to whether
this association of professionals should join the main body of
organized workers in BC, the BC Federation of Labour. They decided to
join and are now tied with the Hospital Employees Union as the third
largest
union in the Fed at about 43,000 members
each. CUPE BC represents around 80,000 workers and BC Government
Employees Union 65,000. The influence of the BCTF in the BC Federation
of Labour is underlined by the election of former BCTF President, Irene
Lanzinger, as the BC Federation of Labour Secretary-Treasurer in 2010.
At the AGM, teachers and
their leadership will sum up
their struggle and those of other workers in the province and
throughout Canada and reflect on how to move forward. That discussion
will inevitably influence the entire organized resistance in BC to the
neoliberal policies of the BC Liberal government and
the corporate billionaires whom they represent.
The mass actions and just
stand of the teachers in defence of quality public education and their
right to wages and benefits commensurate with the important work they
perform have enlivened political discussion in the province as to its
direction. Masses of people, fed up with the constant attacks on
workers
and social programs and the recurring economic crises, especially in
the forestry sector, naturally want to defeat the Liberal government in
May 2013. The people's aspiration to defeat the "pay-the-rich" politics
of the Clark government came to the fore during the referendum to
rescind the HST, the retrogressive individual
tax forced on the people by the provincial Liberal and federal
Conservative governments. But defeating the Liberal government will be
no "cake walk." No one should hold any illusions given the capacity and
power of monopoly capital to use its mass media, "think tank experts"
and electoral machinery to engineer
an electoral outcome suitable to its vested private interests.
BC teachers and their
organized force of activists are
well placed to generate a broad and lively discussion everywhere in the
province on matters of importance to them and the polity in general.
The direct experience of the struggle to defend their rights and public
education forms a foundation on which to discuss: 1) the crucial role
of quality public education in a modern society; 2) the necessity of
teachers and others involved in education having a decisive say and
control over all matters pertaining to education, including salaries
and working conditions and the learning conditions of students; 3) the
need for governments
to increase investments not just in public education but in all social
programs and public services that play such an important role in modern
life such as public health care, seniors' care, alleviating child
poverty etc. Discussion of these issues inevitably raises the question
of what kind of society we want and the necessity
for a new direction for the economy. This also raises the question of
the renewal of the political
process so that workers are given the opportunity to produce enough
social product through manufacturing to ensure the well-being of all
and the general interests of society, and the people can become
politically empowered.
Premier Christy Clark, a
former Minister of Education,
sends her child to a private school, convinced that her high income
which affords her that privilege, will benefit her child over the
children who are in a public education system. This is the very system
for which she as Premier
and defender of the people as a whole and their
public interest, refuses to increase funding. This conflict of interest
speaks volumes about the outlook this politician and other like-minded
politicians
have for the province, who set a negative model by sending their
children to private schools
subsidized with public money. Her personal and
public actions reveal a socially irresponsible
political representative who uses the power of government to politicize
private interests in opposition to the politicization of public
interests and the public good.
BC needs politicians from
the ranks of the people who
defend social programs and public services in word and deed and fight
to politicize public interests. BC needs a province-wide ongoing
discussion over the next 14 months with lots of public actions such as
the rallies and demonstrations in the second week of
March. This will ensure the people are organized, aroused and
politically convinced that the Liberal government must be defeated and
that worker politicians and others dedicated to protecting the public
good against the politicization of private interests are elected in a
majority to the legislature and that the people
will hold them to account.
George Abbott, BC Minister
of Education, displayed his
utter contempt for public education and teachers on March 9,
proclaiming that under Bill 22 teachers could earn an extra $2,500 per
year for every student over 30 enrolled in Grades 4 to 7 classrooms,
and an extra $312 per student over 30 in some secondary
school courses.
Minister George
Abbott is reported to have said that having to pay teachers extra would
discourage school boards from having large
classes.
Is Minister Abbot not
concerned about the cost
saving/cutting measures introduced by School Boards across the province
which are increasing the number of days schools are closed? Many Boards
have extended the
school teaching day by approximately 15 minutes by decreasing the lunch
hour to 45 minutes. This adjustment
in teaching time per day is approximately equal to 10 school days. The
Boards have then increased Spring Break from one week to two weeks and
the other five days have been tacked onto long weekends throughout the
school year, for example providing longer holidays in November and
February.
The government is trying to
undermine important
seniority provisions in the teachers' present contract. Education
Minister George Abbott wants to include a "suitability"
clause in the teachers' contract. He has created a lot of confusion
saying he wants suitable teachers in suitable classes. At present,
teacher placement in classes depends first on their qualifications
and second on their seniority.
The anti-teacher Bill 22 of
the BC Liberals not only
includes the government's hand-picked mediator, it specifically
dictates what the mediator can or cannot consider. The mediator
appointed under Bill 22 cannot negotiate anything that involves
additional claims on government revenue. Specifically, the government
has dictated that teachers are not to receive even a basic 3.2 per cent
cost of living salary increase to maintain their standard of living let
alone one that brings them on par with their peers across the country.