Tag Archives: peter cameron

B.C. Teachers’ Contract: Government Threatens Wage Cut

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     By Keven Drews and Tamsyn Burgmann

05/16/2014

VANCOUVER – The B.C. government is threatening to cut teachers’ wages by five per cent if a new contract agreement isn’t reached by the end of the school year, but the union representing those teachers vows it will take that threat to the Labour Relations Board.

Peter Cameron, chief negotiator of the BC Public School Employers’ Association, the organization representing the provincial government, also said Friday that teachers will receive a $1,200 signing bonus if both sides reach an agreement by the end of June.

The incentives and disincentives placed on the table by the government were the latest details to emerge from a year of contentious labour relations between the B.C. Teachers Federation and the provincial government that included a 89 per cent strike vote and involved a B.C. Supreme Court judgment.

Both sides remain firmly divided over issues related to wages, class size, the composition of those classes and the length of the contract term.

“The proposal we have on the table to try and get a settlement, and the disincentives that we are putting in place are all aimed at getting a deal, and in fact the disincentives will rise if there’s further job action,” said Cameron. “So if they do move to Stage 2 we will, it’s pretty well definite that we’ll have a further response to that.”

The purpose of the government’s actions, he added, is not to try and provoke further strike action but to “provoke a settlement.”

Both sides were back at the bargaining table Friday, and B.C. Teachers’ Federation president Jim Iker said his members will deal with the threat of the five per cent pay cut at the Labour Relations Board.

He said the government still hasn’t addressed issues related to class size and composition and specialist teachers, and the government’s offer of a 6.5-per-cent pay hike over six years isn’t enough. On Thursday, Education Minister Peter Fassbender announced the provincial government was dropping its demand of a 10-year contract.

“They need to put some proposals to get us closer to a deal, including preparation time,” said Iker. “Bargaining is about compromise, and we want a compromise.

But Cameron said teachers are demanding a pay raise of 15.9 per cent over four years. With increased benefits and other factors taken into consideration, the total compensation package demanded by teachers is about 21 per cent, he added.

“We need to see some movement from the union now to come into the ball park because they’re at this point still far, far away from the settlement pattern of all the other unions.”

On Thursday, the B.C. government and the 11-union, 47,000-strong Facilities Bargaining Association announced a tentative deal that would see unionized workers receive a 5.5 per cent over five years.

The teachers have been without a contract since last June. In early March, some 26,051 members of the B.C. Teachers’ Federation voted overwhelmingly in favour of job action, and in April, the union began Stage 1 of its job action.

Teachers stopped supervising students outside the classroom or communicating in writing with administrators, which prompted about a dozen school districts to cancel recess.

A B.C. Supreme Court decision in January awarded the federation $2 million in damages and declared the province’s removal of class size and composition from contract negotiations unconstitutional.

We Lose When B.C. Government Listens To Bond Raters Over Citizens

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Susan Lambert  Susan Lambert     Past President, B.C. Teachers’ Federation

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca    05/05/2014

Peter Cameron’s warnings that the economic skies of B.C. will fall should government negotiate a fair contract for B.C.’s teachers reminded me of Doug Foster’s testimony in the historic court case won by the B.C. Teachers’ Federation this spring.

Foster, assistant deputy finance minister and unabashed fervent apostle of “free market” based economic policy, testified that the province invites bond raters to advise as provincial budgets are developed. That advice is designed to “keep taxes low and constrain spending” in return for a good credit rating.

Foster testified the bond raters are wary of all spending, including capital projects, and are staunchly opposed to deficit budgets. The net zero mandate was approved of by these raters who promised to maintain the triple AAA rating only with the caution that the mandate be maintained.

Foster also testified that government agreed with the raters that the economy was fragile, even though this analysis was contradicted in the government’s message to the people of B.C.

Colin Hansen, the finance minister at the time, painted a rosy picture of the economy in the province, talking about B.C. as one of the strongest leaders in economic growth in Canada attributable to the success of the Olympics, the ability to pay down the debt by $9 billion, and projections of personal income increases of three to four per cent among other favourable indicators.

So Cameron’s warnings connect some economic dots for me. Seems like the bond raters, firms like Standard and Poors found to be complicit in the 2008 global economic crisis, are once again “advising” government. These are the people in favour of an alternative vision of Canada, (one in which the 1% have both economic and political clout and can dictate policies that increase the numbers of homeless, impoverished and dispirited in an increasingly mean world), who are coercing our government with the financial equivalent of the fabled carrot and stick.

Rather than charting our own course as citizens of this province and probably this country, we are being held to ransom by the rogues and villains who profit from low taxes, smaller government and free markets.

These are the greedy charlatans who preach “trickle down” economics and promote private rather than public services. Who are supported by corporations with production and supply lines in Bangladesh where there are no regulations or unions to protect workers from exploitation, violation and death in order to profit when these goods are sold for enormous returns here in B.C.

And what effect has this “free market” driven economic policy had on public services in this province? You don’t have to look further than your local school board struggling to identify yet further cuts to the programs and services that once made the system the strongest in the world.

We have the highest child poverty rate in the country. Mary Ellen Turpel Lafond has recently revealed that we have, across the province, fewer services for children than there are in the city of Calgary.

As this government heeds the advice of free market economists, so does our investment in public services decline. These neo-liberal economic policies are supposed to be beneficial for all, but we see the stark reversal of that promise.

The hope of jobs is fading as the promise is pushed further and further back on the horizon. Public services are declining. And costs to ordinary citizens are increasing. When will we ever learn?

Follow Susan Lambert on Twitter: www.twitter.com/susant8404