Teachers across British Columbia have been battling with the Province and the B.C. Public School Employers' Association about teaching conditions and compensation packages since March and according to Sea to Sky Teacher's Association president Beth Miller, a vote to strike is the next step.
"We've been bargaining locally with the employer team," she said. "But the difficulty is that we're not able to address the items that are of real substance to teachers in Sea to Sky at the local bargaining table. They're not allowed to talk to us about many of the items that we find important like class size and composition.
"Our employer is being told they don't have the authority to bargain on those issues, even though it's something that exists here in our local area. It's something that we find very frustrating."
Miller said class size and composition is the biggest issue in the Sea to Sky Corridor, according to last year's bargaining survey.
"Class size and composition refers to the number of students in a class, the number of special needs students in a class and the types of supports that are in place to help meet the needs of those students - things like having extra learning assistance teachers on hand and the number of teacher assistants that are available to us in the class," she said.
"These are the types of things that we've noticed, a real erosion in services over the last 10 years with this government."
Miller said it's has become increasingly worse ever since a $275 million cutback in the 2001-'02 school year.
"We used to actually have language in our collective agreement that was very specific and had very specific ratios around the number of learning assistance teachers that had to be present, the number of resource teachers and the number of teacher librarians that had to be hired in schools," she said.
"The government stripped that language in 2001-'02 and put in place legislation that doesn't have nearly the teeth to it and doesn't provide nearly the same level of services."
Freed from the restrictive ratios adhered to in previous years, Miller said the Province cut $275 million from the budget that year.
"They didn't have to meet those ratios of number of students to number of teachers and we've seen that same level of service repeated over and over again for the last 10 years," she said. "We're really tired of it locally. We would like to see that changed."
With these and other changes in mind, the B.C. Teachers' Federation has announced its intention to launch job action in September.
Miller said the Sea to Sky School District would have preferred to address issues locally.
"We would like to try and address it locally using the language that was stripped from our collective agreement, but again we're being told by the employer team that they're being told by their organization that that is something that needs to be dealt with at the provincial level," she said.
The employer team includes secretary treasurer John Hetherington, Don Ross Secondary principal Christine Perkins, trustee Christine Buttkus and human resources director Brenda Paul.
Miller said the local school districts across the province are having the same issue.
"We're trying to come up with some solutions to the problems that we see locally and we're just being stymied," she said.
"As well, things aren't going well at the provincial table, which is where we discuss the big money items - things like salary and benefits, hours of work, paid leaves, all of those things that have significant money attached to them - that's why we made the decision at the end of May at the [B.C. Teachers' Federation Representative Assembly] to conduct a provincial strike vote."
The vote to strike will be held between June 24 and 28. If the majority votes yes, the teachers will take job action starting Sept. 6.
"It's a phased action plan, and this vote is for Phase 1 of the action plan which is a withdrawal of some services," explained Miller, who clarified it was not a walkout.
"Teachers will still be teaching but it's things like we won't be attending meetings with administration, we will be keeping track of attendance but we won't submit it via the electronic system that the government has mandated."
Miller said the teachers' three big objectives are improved teaching and learning conditions, salary and benefits improvements and local bargaining as the solution to local problems.
"We're not finding that we're making any progress in any of those areas," she said.
Miller is hoping that if the strike goes through, the Province might take notice and make some changes over the summer before any action needs to happen.
"It's a pressure tactic so that we can have our issues dealt with, some of them locally, and then to put pressure on the provincial table as well," she said.
"We're doing the strike vote in June to put that pressure on and try to encourage the powers that be to engage this summer in bargaining. There's two months sitting there where we should be able to come to some agreements so that there wouldn't essentially have to be job action happening come Sept. 6.
"That really is our intent. We see a break down at the table and we really want to apply pressure."
