[BC省新聞] BCTF: B.C. needs a new government mobilize, 2013, government, practice, teachers

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BCTF: B.C. needs a new government

Union to ask teachers to mobilize during provincial election



Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/news/BCTF+needs+government/6382945/story.html#ixzz1qc4XdF96
VANCOUVER -- The B.C. Teachers’ Federation will ask its members to mobilize to unseat the government in the May 2013 provincial election, a significant departure from past practice for the officially non-partisan body.
The proposal is part of a plan of action formulated at the BCTF’s annual general meeting last week, which will be put before the 41,000-strong membership for a vote next month.
This is the first time the BCTF has explicitly stated its desire for a new government to take power, said spokeswoman Nancy Knickerbocker.
“This is new and it’s an expression of the really intense anger of the members,” she said, referring to the union’s opposition to Bill 22, the legislation passed earlier this month by the Liberal government that forced an end to the teachers’ job action.
The BCTF plan proposes the union “work local-by-local, and as a collective, to motivate the membership to prepare for the May 2013 provincial election to bring in a new government that will repeal Bill 22.”
However, BCTF president Susan Lambert said this does not mean the union is asking its members to support the NDP.
“We’re non-partisan, so we will support candidates who support public education.”
The NDP opposes Bill 22, but would not repeal it upon forming a government in 2013, said Robin Austin, the party’s education critic.
The NDP would, however, return class size and composition to the bargaining process, so there would be no need to repeal the controversial legislation, he explained.
“When governments change, they don’t generally start repealing laws that were made in ... advance. We move forward.”
The Liberals’ Bill 22 also returns class size and composition to the bargaining process, as required by a B.C. Supreme Court ruling declaring the legislation that removed them unconstitutional, but the change won’t happen until next year. Austin asked why the government is waiting that long.
“Our position is to have free collective bargaining on class size and composition, which is what the Liberals are saying they would do in 2013, but the fact is that over the last 11 years they haven’t done it,” he said, adding the electorate will have to decide who is most likely to keep that promise.
However, it was an NDP government that angered the BCTF in 1994 by imposing a provincewide bargaining system on teachers after opposing the policy while in opposition.
B.C. teachers have never said they will support a specific political party, but the BCTF’s proposal is not entirely without precedent, said Charles Ungerleider, a policy expert at the University of B.C.’s department of educational studies.
During the 1969 provincial election, a BCTF campaign that was highly critical of the Social Credit government’s school financing policies was widely perceived as a direct attack on the government, Ungerleider said. “Teachers have been politically active in the past and pretty much ... continuously both on a provincial level and on a local level.”
The BCTF’s Knickerbocker acknowledged the union has run public education campaigns critical of government policy before, but “I have never seen [a campaign] that basically says ‘to bring in a new government.’ In the past we talked about making education a vote-determining issue and I think that would be what we would be trying to do again this time,” she said. Members vote on the plan April 17-19.

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BCTF president Susan Lambert, who is pressing members to take action during then next election, said this does not mean the union is asking its members to support the NDP.


BCTF president Susan Lambert, who is pressing members to take action during then next election, said this does not mean the union is asking its members to support the NDP.