Premier Christy Clark's government recently ramped up its election promise to hammer out a 10-year collective agreement between the British Columbia Teachers' Federation and the B.C. Public School Employers' Association, but the local teachers' union president says it's a bad plan.
Grant Osborne wonders why either side would want to tie their hands for a whole decade and says a 10-year contract would affect local school trustees' ability to negotiate and govern.
"Ten years is a long time for both sides," Osborne said.
The Liberal government likely feels emboldened by the results of the recent election, he said.
"I think that they want to try and prove they can do something that nobody else has done. I don't know if it's an attempt to poke and prod us into a reaction," he said. "You have to assume it's intended to be provocative, so I don't really know what the intent is, unless it's just simply to impose the Liberal government's will on teachers."
Clark announced her 10-year plan in the run-up to the recent election. She's now put her words into action with her government giving notice in a letter sent Friday to the employers' association and the teachers' federation telling them to focus on reaching the 10-year agreement she promised during the campaign.
Osborne said the union was angry that it first heard about the letter through a newspaper article in the Vancouver Sun.
"Once again, Christy Clark, she always chooses interesting times, or the government chooses interesting times, to put that out into play because we were all at the BCTF rep assembly," he said. "And this has happened before. It's pretty disrespectful."
Clark's 10-year plan was floated earlier this year when the union and the province first began negotiating the collective agreement. The union's current contract expires June 30. The two sides have been in talks since February, making good strides, prior to Friday's announcement, Osborne said.
"We are making good progress at the local table, so it's really unnecessary interference right now," he said, adding, "we don't bargain in the press."
The other problem with the 10-year deal is it takes class size and composition talks out of the contract, Osborne said.
The union recently won a court case that says it can negotiate class size and composition.
"So, no sooner have we won a court challenge so we can negotiate this, the government then tries to comes back and says they want to have a deal that completely ignores the court ruling," Osborne said.
A representative from the Ministry of Education could not be reached for comment at press time.
