The ploy by the BC Public School Employers Association (BCPSEA) – that group of trustees created by the Liberal government to negotiate teachers’ contracts – might actually succeed.
How sad that would be. The BCPSEA was created to be the buffer between teachers and the government; the government establishes how much money can be bargained and what can or can’t be negotiated.
The BCPSEA then “bargains” with the teachers, an exercise that consists of repeating what the government is willing to provide and telling the teachers to “take it or leave it.” Normally, the teachers eventually “take it;” this year they decided to “leave it.”
But back to the ploy. The BCPSEA, uncomfortable in the heat generated by the teachers’ refusal to do volunteer activities has filed a complaint with the Labour Relations Board (LRB) accusing the B.C. Teachers’ Federation (BCTF) of carrying on an illegal strike by telling teachers not to volunteer.
If the board sides with the BCPSEA, then the BCTF will have to tell their members that they are free to volunteer or not. What the BCPSEA hopes is that there will be a rift in the BCTF’s membership, some will volunteer and some will not and that the whole protest will blow over.
The teacher holdouts will begin volunteering again and everything will go back to normal, with teachers doing all the coaching, club activities, fundraising, dance chaperoning, etc., etc. that they have always done. In other words, the BCPSEA is hoping this ploy will make them “take it.”
If the ploy works it will be ironic because it will mean that the characteristics teachers possess, which make them particular effective as teachers, may ultimately work against them.
Their genuine interest in children and child development has always been behind their desire to volunteer to run extracurricular activities. Teachers know that children need quality extracurricular activities to develop their social and physical skills and that they won’t get those activities, in many cases, unless teachers provide them.
There would be a second irony in that a central reason for the teachers’ fight with the government in the first place was the removal of class size and composition restrictions, which are vitally important to the amount of individual time and attention teachers can give students.
A third irony is that the most common negative statement thrown at teachers during job actions is that they “don’t care for the kids.”
The BCPSEA knows only too well how much teachers really do care for kids. They are counting on it to make their ploy successful. If enough teachers refuse to stop volunteering, then the BCPSEA and the government will have snuffed out the last spark of protest and the teachers will have to “take it.” Politicians will gloat, trustees will breath easier, students will rejoice, parents will give a sigh of relief. Few, in fact, will see anything negative about it. That is what is particularly sad.
– Jim Holtz is WEEKENDER columnist and a former reporter for the Grand Forks Gazette.