BC Teachers Strike into its fourth month

[ChangeAndChance]

Surprised no one's pointed this one out yet.

The BC Teachers Federation is the union of all public school teachers in British Columbia, Canada. Ever since the Liberal (actually right wing) Party was elected into provincial office in 2001, public education has been on the decline. Classes from kindergarten to twelfth grade are overcrowded and poorly composed. Resources and funding for new textbooks, technology, and field trips are virtually non existent. Those with learning disabilities are not getting the help they need mainly due to government red tape. Not only are BC teachers the lowest paid in the country, they have not received a raise in four years.

After nearly a full school year of weak-kneed ineffective "job action", the BCTF finally went on full strike in the last few weeks of the school year. Apparently the government was not perturbed by this as even though summer school was been canceled, the strike continues to drag on into the planned school year. This especially sucks for me since I am supposed to be graduating this year. My father is a high school teacher himself and we only have enough for then next month until we have to start cutting into our savings. However, we have it good. Many teachers have had to take second or third jobs in the service industry as they live paycheck to paycheck.

The union have lowered their pay and benefit demands over and over again but the Liberals haven't budged. In some ways having your employer be the government is worse than a corporation because the government can simply legislate you back to work whenever they want without having to acknowledge any of your demands. So while families continue to go broke, Premier Christy Clark continues to pursue two environmental destroying industries: the Enbridge Oil Pipeline and a Liquid Natural Gas Pipeline with all that cash she's been saving from not paying teachers.

P.S. Political analysts are estimating that at the rate bargaining is going, school may not return until mid-October. WTF?

[Prairie Fire]

Surprised no one's pointed this one out yet.

CPC-ML has been doing regular journalism on the BC Teachers' fight for Months. I'll re-post all of the relevant articles below:

http://cpcml.ca/BCW2014/BC0214.HTM#1
http://cpcml.ca/BCW2014/BC0213.HTM#1
http://cpcml.ca/BCW2014/BC0212.HTM#1
http://cpcml.ca/BCW2014/BC0211.HTM#1
http://cpcml.ca/BCW2014/BC0210.HTM
http://cpcml.ca/BCW2014/BC0209.HTM

P.S. Political analysts are estimating that at the rate bargaining is going, school may not return until mid-October. WTF?

Simply put, the government is trying to bankrupt the teachers into submission. The courts have already ruled in favour of the teachers, but the province is stalling and tying the union up to try and starve them into defeat.

In some ways having your employer be the government is worse than a corporation because the government can simply legislate you back to work whenever they want without having to acknowledge any of your demands.

Well, Air Canada has been a private company since 1988, but the Harper Government still threatened back-to-work legislation for their flight attendants when they went on strike in 2011. The same can be said for CN Rail (private since 1995,) the same year.

Back-to-work legislation can be wielded against any sector of workers, public or private.