Jim Iker has just announced that teachers have voted to ratify their agreement with the BC government with a yes vote of 86%. Schools will be open on Monday. About 75% of BC Teachers submitted a ballot.
This ends the longest education dispute in BC history and only the 3rd time BC teachers have agreed to a negotiated settlement since they started bargaining on a provincial level in 1994.
But despite Christy Clark championing the deal as “five years of labour peace”, a “re-opener” clause has been written into the contract pertaining the court battle about the NDP-bargained class size/composition limits stripped out of the teacher’s agreement by Christy Clark as education minister back in 2002.
If the union ends up winning that court battle, which many experts seem to believe, this new collective agreement will be re opened and both sides would start negotiating new class size/composition limits.
At that point it’s anyone’s guess what will happen; some in the union say it will have the right to strike during those talks, and the government isn’t sure because the BC Labour Code forbids strikes and lockouts during a collective agreement.
If history repeats itself, things could devolve and break down. So while it seems kids will be back in the classroom for the foreseeable future, this saga if far from over and it’s certainly too soon to celebrate “five years of labour peace”.
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