It has been three weeks since teachers went on strike and there has been no changes in negotiations.
The Supreme Court of British Columbia will meet with the Employer’s Association and will look at class size and compositional grievances in the second week of October.
Norm Sabourin, president of the Boundary District Teachers Federation, said that everything regarding teachers’ job action is still at the phase one level.
“We’re still waiting and I think it’s been on hold for a while,” he said. “We’re trying to deal with a split of issues and we’re waiting for a meeting with the arbitrator.”
Madam Justice of the Supreme Court stated there needed to be a remedy for this situation by next April.
“Basically, she called it unconstitutional to hold us,” Sabourin mentioned.
Last April, the B.C. Supreme Court declared that dismissal of the teachers collective agreement by the government was against political constitution and had to be fixed in a year.
“There have been a number of meetings about that and we’ve been hitting a brick wall and going nowhere,” said Sabourin. “The BCTF has basically contacted the B.C. Supreme and said they needed clarification.”
Steps will not be taken towards the second phase of job action for some time.
“In order to do anything other than phase one, we would have to have representatives from around the province meet together to discuss. It would be a fairly detailed process to even begin to go into phase two.”
Determining what can be bargained provincially and what can be done locally will not be discussed until there is an open negotiation, Sabourin stated.
“There’s just very little progress,” concluded Sabourin. “The best case scenario is that bargaining happens and then we can go back to work fully. That’s the ultimate goal.”