Teachers across British Columbia have voted overwhelmingly to take action to back their bargaining objectives and according to Sea to Sky Teachers' Association president Beth Miller, Sea to Sky School District was no different.
"In the Sea to Sky district we had an 80 per cent turnout for the vote and 90 per cent voted yes," Miller said.
Ninety per cent of teachers province-wide voted yes in the strike vote conducted June 24, 27 and 28. In all, 28,128 teachers cast their ballots, of whom 25,282 voted yes.About 70 per cent of teachers in schools and teachers teaching on call participated.
Bargaining objectives include improved teaching and learning conditions, fair improvements to salary and benefits, and restoration of local bargaining rights.
"Teachers take this action very reluctantly but, after a decade of cuts, we are determined to achieve improvements to teaching and learning conditions in B.C. schools," said Susan Lambert, president of the B.C. Teachers' Federation (BCTF).
"There's been about a decade of cuts to educational funding that has resulted in tens of thousands of oversized classes and a lack of support for students with special needs."
Lambert said the cutbacks result in reductions in teacher-librarian time, English as a second language time, learning assistance time and learning resource time.
"All of that has really impacted on the nature and the quality of programming that we can give to students and that's caused such anxiety that we want this round of bargaining to address that."
She said with regards to fair improvements to salary and benefits, B.C. teachers haven't had benefit improvements in 20 years and salaries have lagged.
"Our benefit packages have become so stale-dated that a lot of them are almost worthless so we're looking to bring those into the modern world," said Lambert.
"Our salaries have fallen far, far behind colleagues across the country. A Victoria teacher would be earning $21,000 more in Edmonton with the same qualifications - that's the kind of discrepancy we're looking at here."
The average starting wage for B.C. teachers is about $47,000 and maxes out at $75,000.
However, according to the B.C. Public School Employers Association, it would cost taxpayers an additional $2.1 billion to meet proposals tabled by the BCTF in contract negotiations, which recently ground to a standstill.
Teacher requests include 10 days paid bereavement leave for the death or "any friend or relative" and a 26-week fully paid leave of absence per year for direct or indirect compassionate care "to any person."
Lambert said those requests are part of BCTF's "opening bargaining position."
"When you bargain, the whole notion of bargaining is a negotiation, a compromise, a give and take - so what you start with is what you would prefer optimally and then you go in and negotiate, and the collective agreement is a product of that negotiation," she said.
"It's a mutually agreed to, jointly signed pact that is the compromise so the opening position is never the final sign-off position but it is something that we put forward as the optimal."
For Sea to Sky representative Miller, the third objective is important to address issues that are district specific. Lambert agreed.
"We have provincial regulation that suggests most bargaining should happen provincially but we have found that to be quite dysfunctional over the years," said Lambert.
"What we are proposing is that if you have local problems and you meet over the local table to solve those problems, it's much more efficient and effective. People understand the issue, people understand the resolution, and it lessens problems and grievances down the road that are costly."
She said it makes sense because every school district is different.
"In Squamish you have far different challenges and issues than, say, Surrey, and Surrey is completely different from Prince George and so on and so forth," said Lambert.
"Everyone has their own unique cultures as well as situations that are demographical or geographical that they have to deal with and it doesn't make sense to try to do a one-size-fits-all solution at the provincial table."
Miller said one big problem for teachers in Squamish is the number of teachers who are on temporary contracts for years with no re-hiring rights. On a local scale, Miller would request teachers work on continuing contracts - meaning teachers have to be formerly laid off but have certain recall rights based on seniority.
Under the current system, when a permanent position opens, any teacher who's had a full-year, full-time contract or more than two half-time contracts is put in a priority group, but within that priority group there's no seniority.
"It just basically gives you first dibs, but there's no guarantee that you're actually going to get hired for a job over somebody else," she said.
"There's at least one teacher who's been with the district for 13 years on temporary contracts and lots of teachers are sort of in the six-, seven-, eight-year range on temporary contracts, so it's really difficult for them.
"They can't get a mortgage because they don't have continuing employment - there's no guarantee they're going to have a job come September."
She said right now someone who's been in the district one year could get a job over someone who's been with the district for seven years, and unless the less experienced teacher has specialized skills, it's an unfair system.
Lambert said the strong yes vote shows that teachers are united and prepared to take action to achieve their goals.If no progress is made in bargaining, the initial phase of job action is set to begin on Sept. 6, the first day of the upcoming school year. Teachers will continue teaching, fulfilling all their classroom duties, and communicating with parents.
However, they will stop doing administrative work.
"I want to reassure parents that their children's teachers will be focused on excellence in our classrooms. Because we won't be doing all the many bureaucratic and administrative tasks that have been added onto our jobs, we'll have more time to teach, to offer individual attention to students, and to keep in close communication with parents," Lambert said.
"We're looking forward to a year of joyful teaching and learning, without the distractions of 'administrivia' that can take so much time and energy away from what we love to do best - teaching."
