A older lady stopped by one of the picket lines to deliver doughnuts to the teachers. She had grown up in Nazi Germany. She said she new first hand what happens when citizens don’t fight for democracy and the rule of law. Wow. #Iwillholdtheline
Make no mistake. The BC Liberals have got the province into a terrible mess. It’s not unlike their BC Hydro fiasco in which years of lack of oversight of the crown corporation have led to retroactive costs that will need to be funded by sudden massive increases in citizens’ Hydro fees. In education, the problem is similar. Bad policy has led to a huge burden on taxpayers years later.
The trouble started on January 26, 2002, when Education Minister Christy Clark stood up in the BC Legislature and proudly announced the new Bill 28, which removed class size and composition limits from the teacher contract and enshrined them in law.
In effect, what Christy Clark was announcing was that the government was reneging on its part in a contractual agreement, and creating a law that prevented the teachers from ever even asking for such an agreement again.
Naturally, the teachers’ union took the government…
View original post 1,034 more words
Shawn L. Bird 
Be glad you live in a province where the courts willingly stand on principals of law and good faith. In the US, a state can unilaterally remove those collective bargaining rights altogether, as happened in Wisconsin in 2011. While one court struck down the provisions, another upheld them, so they are still winding through the court system. However, since most Wisconsin Supreme Court justices are conservatives appointed by Republican Governors, most believe the law will be upheld. This is how our governments truly value teachers.
Our judges aren’t elected, which means they can do what’s right rather than what’s popular, in theory at least.
This government has lost twice to provincial Supreme Court, so now they’re going to the Supreme Court of Canada. They know they’re likely to lose, and so they’re trying to get us to agree that if they lose, we absolve them so they won’t have to pay whatever the court decision orders! Imagine the gall to try to put such a thing into the collective agreement! When we refused, they took to media saying we were the intransigent ones (not that they know such big words). So frustrating. Holding the faith is hard. I have a head ache.