There won't be a 'strike' as such

I expect that there will be job action which consists of doing ONLY classroom work and doing no extra-curricular or administrative duties.

As long as the teachers are in their classrooms teaching every day - and I expect they will be unless the employer locks them out - the job of demonizing the union is going to be pretty difficult, even for a prevaracator like Miss Christy - Denis Pilon to the contrary.

And, it's not all that long ago that MLAs voted themselves a contract with an increase of considerably more than zero across the board.

In fact, the real danger for teachers in BC is a result of chronic underfunding AND the utter waste of more than $220 million a year on private schools.

Put that money back where it belongs and the BCLiberals haven't got a leg to stand on.

Dennis Pilon is all over the

Dennis Pilon is all over the map on so many things.
Our granddaughter is a teacher, and the hours spent outside of teaching is huge. Coaching, rowing, running and bike racing all things that she is very qualified to with her students. It isn't a 9 to 5 job for sure

AH YES, I REMEMBER WHEN

Teaching was an honorable profession where university educated teachers brought learning to our communities. Alas the position of teacher has been attacked and denigrated by those misdirected politicians who's agenda is something other than the education of our population.

Should we wish to attract quality people for the educating of our children we must only do two things. First, recognize them as the professionals they are and then pay them appropriately. They are not BABY SITTERS as our government leaders would have us believe.

Where does the NDP "receive

Where does the NDP "receive strong support from the province's labour unions"?

The unions, or rather their leaders, may be giving support and financial help, but the membership has been voting Reform since they've raised their nut sized heads.

Here in the Cariboo, we have Reform MP seatwarmers , like Dick Harris, and Mayfield before him, elected and reelected time after time with huge majorities, for close to 20 years, working to eliminate unions .

Like former Reform MP and SFU economics professors emeritus Herb Grubel said it in his MP days:" A special target of all my interest is really unions. Free trade will put pressure on the elimination of these kind of institutions which I believe are unjust".

Roll on corporate dictatorship of the world, according what these "professors" are teaching.

Like Herb also said it once on TV :"No country can afford universal health care"

Good economics! Right Herb ?

This has been the policy of the Reform Party, Manning, Harper and their local branch , the BC Liberal Party, from the beginning.

So, where are the unions to point this out?

I've never heard any of them making a beep.

Ed Deak.

The Cost of Labour Support

There is no question the NDP relationship with the BCTF will be raised in the course of a fall 2013 election. BCPSEA is busy building the basis for the argument right now, measuring the BCTF contract demands at over $2 billion in total costs: http://tinyurl.com/6b5rwnp

But the BCTF aren't the only public sector unionists helping stoke the fires of taxpayer anxiety. BCGEU's Darryl Walker's clarion call for more money made at convention in June 2011, despite the fact the GEU contract expires in 2012, also helps the BCLiberal spinmeisters to frame the question very effectively: http://tinyurl.com/5stx5s2

And what of the threat of all those CUPE contract negotiations still outstanding - clinging to the hope of getting out from under the two zeros mandate?

UNIONS?

I guess professional teachers shouldn't need a union. Just like the lawyers, the doctors, the notaries etc. They just set their own rates and the buyer be dammed. Anyone who tries to cut the rate gets kicked out of the club, loses their right to work in their field and so they toe the line. Even unions aren't that harsh. Been to a non-union dentist late1y? You know the one that works for less to help the needy.

O.K Markunas

You say, "There is no question the NDP relationship with the BCTF will be raised in the course of a fall 2013 election." That implies what? The BCTF does not contribute to the NDP. Individual members might but they are a minority. You don't know what you are talking about . In any event that is hardly the same for the BC Liberals and all those corporate donors who get special favors in legislation. The HST tax burden shift is a classic recent example. So if the liberal want to raise the issue, I'm sure Adrian Dix will remind the voter who pays the BC Liberals to get business friendly legislation in every budget.

It has always been a right-wing strategy to create a straw man and then pretend they are saving the day. Christy may try the same but not every voter is soo dumb.

ratnic -- Dentist union?

The Association (BCDA) publishes an annual Fee Guide but the individual dentists are free to charge what they like.

As for charity work, they have a list of "Reduced Cost Clinics".

I guess what you're comparing to are non-accredited practitioners working in back alleys? See a lot of those?

Please don't use dentists in your rants if you don't know what you're talking about.

I have a dental appointment

I have a dental appointment tomorrow and can only guess how many hundreds I'll be charged for 20 mins work.

Ed Deak.

The object of working is to

The object of working is to provide an income for YOUR family. Should outside influences make the income for MY family drop then I would change profesions to maintain their income level. I have had four professions. The first was in health care and Trudeau froze wages starting with mine.When I quit to work elseware I was asked "where my dedication was" and after a seconds thought the answer was "to my family".

BCTF Has Always Been Militant

Even during the 1990's, one BC NDP cabinet minister called the BCTF executive either "left" or "hard "left". Certainly a militant union.

Based upon the last BCTF strike action, a 2005 Mustel opinion poll had these findings:

1. "Do you support or oppose BC teachers’ plan to strike?

Support 45%
Oppose 52%
Don’t Know/No Opinion 4%

2. Would you support or oppose BC teachers taking strike action despite legislation that makes it illegal?

Support 31%
Oppose 57%
Don’t Know/No Opinion 13%

http://www.mustelgroup.com/pr/20051006.htm

The BCTF is playing with a double-edged sword here.

Skywalker

Surely you've watched the Edo style Kabuki theatre which passes for politics in BC long enough to recognize the set piece likely to be acted out this fall.

Christy Clark is a hard to sell personality as thoughtful leader - but thrives on smash-mouth politics. And those she's gathered round her to help plan her campaign, whether Mr. Zubyk or Ms. Martin, are not public policy debaters. Should Ms. Clark choose to call an election this fall, it will be a nasty, brutish affair. The BCLiberal plan will be to use all available found objects to help paint the NDP as beholden to select interests, and in the case of public sector unions being willing to give large, unaffordable wage lifts.

So, once the HST referendum is over don't be surprised to see the debate quickly turn to "fiscal rectitude" or "fiscal restraint", like it already has in Greece, the USA etc., with plenty of fearmongering thrown in.

Let me be clear, it is my profound hope that Mr. Dix counters with a campaign of sharp criticism and a compelling alternative, that he overwhelms Christy Clark and banishes those like her to the opposition benches for a generation at least.

Dentist for less?

It may well be that there are "Reduced Cost Clinics" out there but for the working poor they are about as accessible as a pro-bono lawyer.

@ cool hand

The public never supports a teacher strike. Never! It is an inconvenience to when "free daycare is not available" not to mention all the other reasons the public hates any public sector workers. It matter not how many years one has to train to become one. Now if you were a doctor, you could demand a million a year and the public would support them. So polling the public on a teacher strike is completely pointless as the BC Liberals will do what they always do and the teachers will have to play the PR card better than a bunch of lying Liberals.

If the BCTF is a militant union then the Socred/liberals have only themselves to blame. Education has been used as a political football by all governments but it is the Socred/liberal bunch that most often, because of their frequency in office and their penchant for manipulating public opinion, influenced teacher opinion about government.

The only irony is that there are still teachers who vote for the very government that screws them repeatedly.

Well ...

"Just over 60 per cent of the province's 41,000 teachers participated in a strike vote that resulted to do nothing but teach this September if their employer and their union can't come to an agreement on a new teachers' contract before the summer is out. But with a possible provincial election this fall, how will a job action by one of the province's most powerful labour unions affect the deciding vote over our next premier?"

Er, um, well, with all due respect to my favourite news and information Website (Yeah Tyee!), you folks really need to upgrade your editors from comment censors to English, editorial, language, and grammar specialists. I mean, what, exactly, are these two sentences supposed to be saying? For a professional news site they are remarkabley ungrammatical and non-error-free.

Geez, in my semi-retirement I'm looking for a part-time job for filling the time and boosting my meagre HST impended income ... any takers?
.
:)

@John Greg

Good eye. In my defence, my grammar and sentence structure isn't usually that terrible, but in making a change to the first sentence after the article was already posted I and the posting editor must have not reread what I changed closely enough. Thanks for the heads up!

Or should it be the posting

Or should it be the posting editor and I? Oh dear.

Skywalker

Always so quick on the trigger finger to blame....well, everything under the sun on those mean spirited liberals, or socreds prior to them.
Its all thier fault, and NO ONE ELSES the teachers are "militant".
Really?

"It has been 16 years since the
NDP government ended full-scope
local bargaining and imposed our
current structure of bargaining
where virtually all substantive items
are negotiated at the provincial
table. What we recall as the glory
days of local bargaining consisted
of just three rounds over a period of
only five years. It may have been
short, but it was memorable.
In those three rounds, particularly
the first two, most locals bargained
healthy salary increases and clear
class-size and composition provisions.
The final round ended with
back-to-work legislation in the
spring of 1993, which ended strikes
in Surrey and Vancouver. Those
locals had to endure concluding
their agreements through the
arbitration process.
Effectively, local bargaining was
over. A year later, the government
created the British Columbia Public
School Employers’ Association
(BCPSEA) and brought in the Public
Education Labour Relations Act
(PELRA), which removed bargaining
authority from locals and made the
BCTF the bargaining agent for all
public school teachers in BC."

http://bctf.ca/uploadedFiles/Public/Publications/TeacherNewsmag/archive/2010-2011/2011-01/Index.pdf

question

There are always questions to ask: What is the real intend of BC Liberal government when dealing with teachers? Is their aim to follow American model of a slow privatization of our public educational system? It is their aim to make school administrators being managers who, similarly to private sector, will have 100% power over their employees? It is their aim to replace our public schools with charter schools as is done in the USA? Anybody has answers to this? I would love to hear them.

A small correction

The article states:

"If that doesn't work, the vote gives the union the mandate to increase the job action all the way to a withdrawl of teaching services."

This strike vote was to approve Phase One of job action. The BCTF representative assembly passed motions requiring escalating phases (e.g., withdrawal of service) to be subject to similar province-wide votes.

No 'SPIN' for B.C.

The people of BC are not naïve. There is no way that the NDP could be considered responsible for any upcoming action of the teachers' professional union. It took the Supreme Court and about nine years to return the teachers' rights to bargain with this provincial government and it (the provincial government) is still pretending that the Court Decision was not made. The NDP had nothing to do with any of it. Maybe B.C. should simply do away with Law? It is expensive. If it doesn't apply here, why have it? That would give the Liberals something to 'spin' for us.

Tax cuts create fiscal crisis

Provincially, nationally and internationally, the name of the game is to give massive corporate tax breaks and bailouts, hence creating a fiscal crisis in government. The BC Liberals have been steadily decreasing corporate tax rates, while shifting taxes from these some companies to the public through the HST. The mainstream media tell us these reduced taxes will increase jobs and thereby increase government revenues, but its all a lie, as the media cheer leads or ignores the off shoring of our resource base jobs. There is lots of money for bank bailouts, but nothing for teachers or public employees. We are being bamboozled by paid liars.

Maybe?

We could REALLY sell BC Rail, this time, instead of pretending to sell it, then giving out tax breaks that over time almost equals what CN paid. THEN we could afford to pay GOOD teachers what their worth and fire the bad ones?

"I have a dental appointment tomorrow and can only guess how many hundreds I'll be charged for 20 mins work."
Well, Ed, either go out to the shop, grab the ol' hand drill and adjust the sideview mirror on the tractor and go to work, or hitch a ride into town and pay the rate.

40%

Almost half (40%) of teachers did not vote. What does this mean? They don't believe that a pay increase is justified? That they don't care about class size and composition? That they don't want to be involved in any public action (work to rule, strike)? Are they anti-union?
If I were the BCTF leader, I would be rather concerned that 40% of teachers do not really give a damn, not even enough to express their view through voting. These are educated people who I assume are well aware of the system they work in. Is it really okay?

greengreen

Evidently a 60% turnout is good enough to elect the leaders of this country (20% in municipal elections). You somehow think it should be different elsewhere?

The BCTF is just being used as a political pawn!

You can be sure that what is being offered and the concessions being asked for by BCPSEA are really what is being demanded by the Liberal Government. I am convinced that what they are doing is like "prodding the tiger with a stick" trying to make political hay from the reactions/reponses.

You wouldn't think that this government had actually lost the recent lawsuit, since they are completely ignoring that fact. It's too bad that this government in reality doesn't give a hoot about the quality of our education system, because if they did, they wouldn't have done what they have over the last decade.

RickW

Actually I do think it should be different.
Union strike votes are typically well up in the mid to high 90% range. This is supposed to send a "message" to the employer that the membership is united behind the union leadership and they are speaking with one voice. Witness the two high profile strikes of late, Canada Post and Air Canada, both very high strike vote turnouts.
60% is really quite pathetic and it does indicate there are underlying issues within the union.

We need a voucher system in this province

The public teaching sector is ridiculously inefficient. The VSB spends $9500 per student per year on schooling! How insane is that? Give me a class of 40 Gr. 7s and I'll teach them in a mansion that would make harry potter jealous, drive them to field trips in a stretch hummer, give them free ipads and teach them more that year than they'll learn for the rest of their lives and still make a fortune. My local school looks like a goddamn prison. So much waste in our schools.. what the hell does a VP do? Or the principal for that matter? Why do they take the whole summer off when study after study shows that this really damages learning? Why is it a lottery to get a decent teacher? Probably 1 out of 20 teachers in the province cares or is any good at their jobs... how about videos in the classroom so I can check up on them?

Actually Happy..

They did negotiate a contract and yes for you, an anti union guy, to be quoting a union slamming the NDP is a bit hypocritical. This is all about the BC Liberals and how they treat teachers and kids. Nice try at a deflection but it won't work.

You call this negotiation Skywalker?

"The final round ended with
back-to-work legislation in the
spring of 1993, which ended strikes
in Surrey and Vancouver. Those
locals had to endure concluding
their agreements through the
arbitration process."

ARBITRATION is not NEGOTIATION. Do I actually have to explain how the process works?

The only one deflecting here is you. You'd rather try to make something out of the fact I used the teachers words themselves to blow your "liberals made the teachers militant" hogwash out the window rather than consider the facts.

The facts are it was the NDP who ended the BCTF's "glory days" (thier words)by ending local bargaining.
And guess what. It was the correct thing to do. No more "me too" clauses, one after another.
You see Skywalker I know all about this kind of stuff. Because, sorry to burst your bubble but I've been a dues paying member of no less than six private sector unions starting with the IWA when I was a teenager in high school working weekends at the Weldwood mill in Sqaumish.
But yes, I do have issues with PUBLIC unions for reasons stated in the past and won't bother getting into again.

Enjoying your Canada Day? This reactionary neocon is working, alongside my union coworkers.
Not making mega OT triple time and a half like a government worker though.
We settle for time and a half as per the Canada Labor Code standards.

@ Happy

So legislating Vancouver and Surrey teachers back to work after the two sides were going nowhere is "all of the province". Coming from the private sector you might remember teachers being sold out by Jack Munroe and Bill Bennett. Most of the last 50 years have been under Socred/Liberal rule. Most of the polarization is because of them. They certainly made no attempt to change whatever you are talking about and Christy dismal, hateful performance as Education Minister under Campbell is still remembered.

Enjoy you time OT. It is something no teacher ever got or gets.

Skywalker

Some more basic Canada Labor Code "education" for you.
The standard work year as defined in the CLC is 2080 hours.
52 weeks by 40 hours. With me so far?
Teachers don't work 52 weeks. They get the entire summer off. They do however get a full years salary.
So unless you have a job wher you WOULD work 2080 hours, less holidays and stats, you are NOT ENTITLED to overtime. Understand?

I never said all the province. In fact I nener said much of anything to start with. I merely reprinted what the teachers themselves said.
The NDP had thier chance to cool the polarization, as you put it, and instead increased it by ending local bargaining province wide, not just Surrey and Vancouver.

Deal with it.

Happy in need of a Correction!

Happy - Your comments are so full of it, you are either baiting Skywalker, or you just don't get it!

1) Teachers work way more than the hours they are in front of students. They supervise students out of class, they have daily marking, formal report cards up to 6 times a year, prep, upgrading of skills with new technologies, staff meetings, etc, etc!

2) Teachers are paid over 10 months, and only recently have some in some school districts been given the option to have their pay spread out over 12 months. Many/most teachers put in more than 8 hours per day when you include the öther stuff", but don't expect overtime as it is part of being in the profession. So your argument is bull!

3) The Liberals are the ones who have done their very best over the last decade to fuel division and polarization over the public school system. If you had any clue as to what has been going on over these years as far as education, you wouldn't be making the comments that you have made.

happy

So typical of you they get paid a salary, NOT BY THE HOUR. They don't get vacation pay: they are unemplyed for two months of the summer. If they draw pay in the summer they have a portion of their monthly salary held back for that purpose. You with me so far? The teachers salary was always and still is only for the school year worked. That is not a full years salary. Never has been. You get it now?

If you like the pay, go back to university get a degree and apply. Now.

No education minister was as hated as Christy Clark!

gsarahs, then Skywalker

Yes, yes, of course I know techers put in more hours than straight instructional time.
Now answer truthfully. Does the total hours worked in class and non class time exceed 2080 in a year? If yes please give a breakdown.
And really, spare me that they (you?) don't expect overtime as "part of thier profession"
If you work the hours you get MUST be paid overtime. Your employer is bound by LAW to pay you. Thats no bull, as you put it.
Do you expect me to believe for one second the BCTF would let that one slide? If so they are failing you badly.
I recommend a course in Labor Law before any further discussion. Pro D day would be handy for that.

Skywalker. Thanks for repeating what I said. They get a salary.
I get a salary too. Its BASED, as are all salaries, on the previously mentioned 2080. I also get overtime. CLC. Look it up.
I'll change one minor phrase to suit you. They don't get paid a full years salary then. They get paid an annual salary. Better?

"If you like the pay, go back to university get a degree and apply"

Why would I want to take a pay cut?

And Skywalker

No vacation pay? Then why does this mention vacation pay. I took it straight from the BCTF website again. I'm such a hypocrite.

"Severance pay, vacation pay, and retirement incentives will be divided by your normal weekly earnings and allocated forward from the time you leave employment"

http://bctf.ca/TeachersOnCall.aspx?id=4754

Happy my goodness man!

That is for "teachers on call". Then you say you would not want to take a cut in pay to teach. If that isn't hypocisy given your past comments, nothing is. Then in your rebuttal you tell gsarahs that "If you work the hours you get MUST be paid overtime. Your employer is bound by LAW to pay you." which shows how little you know about teaching. No, you must not get paid overtime the LAW you speak of does not apply. Sheesh! You get a straight salary which covers all work including OT. and time and half or double time is non existent in teaching.

Keep at it Happy, I was once in the IWA and in construction and teaching.

Skywalker

Are teachers on call not teachers?
How can the Law not apply. Do they have a Special Excemption, lets see it then please. If you work beyond 2080 hours in a calendar year you get time and a half overtime. Time and a half is the only overtime rate recognized in the CLC by the way, theres no such thing as double or higher. Your employer MAY pay you more, they may not pay you less.
That applies to ALL Canadian workers, and Federal regulations trump Provincial every time.
Thats the Law too.
There is no such thing as a straight salary covering all work including overtime if you have a full time job working the 2080 hours per annum. EXCEPT....for upper management, eg Executives. They are excempt. Companies can work them into the litteral ground and many do.

You choose not to believe so further discussion is pointless.

IWA huh. Excellent...

Umm - maybe a few facts would help

BC teachers' salary scale is as follows:
Teachers with 4 years of college start at $37,908/year and can receive raises until they reach a level of $56,743/year.

If they have 6 years of education (typical for a Master's degree) the starting rate is $45,506 and the maximum is $70,684.

Alberta teachers have significantly higher rates of pay at the current time.

Workers in B.C. must get 4% vacation pay, unless otherwise collectively bargained. Teachers do get vacation pay which is rolled into the daily rate of pay. It does not create so called paid days on leave because for teachers their vacation pay is part of their annual salary.

Teachers on Call, on the other hand, get vacation pay because they're paid - not by contract but on a per Diem basis.

40% again

Yes, I would expect a higher rate of voting among the teachers. They are a specific group and the voting is about specific concerns affecting this group. As well, they are well educated-all of them.
I am curious why a teacher would not vote, either for or against the motion.
ps. I don't accept that our voting rates in federal,provincial or municipal elections is good enough. It's a disgrace!

Haven't we learned anything

Politicians who are barely in the legislator boast of all the work they have to do outside the house representing voters.
Sitting on boards and attending events and all the perks that go with it including the gas and some cash.
Teachers are invaluable on the job they do and put in many extra hours at events in their communities because of the obvious benefits to families without any reward for the things they do.

The entire article reads

The entire article reads like a blurb from the teacher's union leader.

This has NOTHING to do with "the quality of education". There's an undercurrent here that implies that denyng the teachers more money is tantamount to denying the students.

Rubbish! The teachers are in a trade union, protected against lower-cost job competition. Unions exist for one purpose only: to protect the jobs of, and maximize the gains for, senior members of that union. That's all.

The kids are being held to ransom, and a gun is being held to the taxpayers' heads - by both government AND the union. This is a govenment-backed monopoly. Forget silliness like "yearly evaluations": high time we parents put our employees' feet to the fire and allowed a little free choice in the education arena...

Yo Skywalker

Well... during late 1983, the Operation Solidarity/Solidarity Coalition began acting like a para-parliamentary organization that left Barrett's NDP in the dust.

At the time, I will never forget the front-page Vancouver Sun opinion poll (by the then MarkTrend Research) showing that only 19% of BC'ers supported those left-wing loons. The Socreds were also polling well ahead of the NDP. Etched in the brain.

Jack Munroe was a realist and pragmatist who also read the opinion polls and saw the writing on the wall. Without that Kelowna "accord", with then dufus BC Fed head Art Kube crying teardrops on the BCTV NewsHour, Bennett was prepared to call a snap election and the ballot box question would have been:

"Do you want an extra-parliamentary opposition to run the province or a duly elected government?"

Again, Solidarity was at 19% support and the Socreds were well ahead of the NDP due to the loony left's antics at the time.

That's history.

To re-iterate, the BCTF executive is both "left" and "hard left" according to a 1990's NDP cabinet minister. What I see the BCTF demanding would cost the BC treasury another ~$1 billion/annum when we are running budget deficits. Do you think public sympathy is there for that?

What further irks me is that the BCTF executive is against everything that would generate additional government revenues (income taxes, corporate taxes, consumption taxes) that would be derived from the natural gas industry in NE BC to coal mining on Vancouver Island.

For example, the Alberni District Teacher's Union opposition to the Raven Coal Mine. Wayyyy outta their jurisdiction.

If ya oppose the government receiving additional revenue to support your wage and other demands, don't expect these financial demands to be met. Simple as that.

Ummmm... nope. Greece is governed by a Socialist government, the Panhellenic Socialist Movement to be exact.

Out of 300 seats in the October 4, 2009 election, the left dominates:

1. Panhellenic Socialist Movement - 160
2. Communist Party - 21
3. Colaition of the Radical Left - 13

Ergo, the left controls almost 2/3 of the seats in the Greek federal parliament.

Reality, like a cold shower, can be a bitch.

"Reality, like a cold shower, can be a bitch."

I can't speak for Skywalker, but I'll bet he wasn't talking about the Greek parliament - he was talking about the rightwingers running Germany and France who are, mutatis mutandis, dictating the terms of the Greek bailout.

Doesn't matter what your politics is, a gun to the side of the head isn't a matter of opinon Lukie...as for your observations about Bennett - there's little doubt he couldn't have gotten away with finessing Munro and the unions if recall and initiative legislation had been in place at the time.

Life, as you say, is a bitch - something Campbell learned too late to rescue his government; we'll have to see what happens to Miss Christy.

Witless

"The kids are being held to ransom, and a gun is being held to the taxpayers' heads - by both government AND the union. This is a govenment-backed monopoly. Forget silliness like "yearly evaluations": high time we parents put our employees' feet to the fire and allowed a little free choice in the education arena..."

70,000 BC kids in 320 private educational institutions financed with 50% government funding and as much as they can rake off from parents and others - all that says we already have "free choice" in the education arena.

"But soft! What is this gun I see before me?"
- Macbeth for half-wits.

zalm, open your eyes...

We are ALL compelled to pay public school fees, mostly going very largely toward teacher salaries, for the education of other people's kids.

Still more extracted tax monies go straight into supporting publicly-funded post-secondary schooling.

Until that changes, your "free choice in education" is entirely illusory.

@Kreditanstalt

Fair game - taxpayers DO pay for the public school system - which is why they ought to support it and encourage its excellence.

Taxpayers SHOULD NOT BE PAYING FOR THE INDEPENDENT SCHOOL SYSTEM - which is the point zalm was making.

Take back the $220 million plus that's going to support people who don't believe in the public system - let them pay their own way - and then we'll have a public school program that we could all be part of and proud of.

You have free choice now - pay your taxes to the public system or PAY YOUR OWN WAY IN THE PRIVATE SYSTEM.

Just don't ask for any of my tax dollars for a system I neither support nor patronize.

Just like the church - go there, pray in a fulsome way to your god - but don't ask me for anything.

Strike vote

I read the comments and noticed no one mentioned the ambiguity of the question: "Are you in favour of a strike?"
Of course no one actually likes a strike! Kids lose instruction, teachers lose pay and everyone involved gets to look bad. So I'm not surprised that some teachers didn't vote. The question should have added, "... if recommended by your bargaining committee." Many teachers probably have not grasped the fact that teacher disunity makes a strike MORE probable, not less, because the employer is emboldened by the idea that some teachers may not support their own representatives.
Also, BCPSEA virtually guaranteed a strike by tabling a number of draconian demands to remove teachers' historic seniority rights. Here's a better question: "Do you think that a child in BC ought to have to attend a private school in order to receive a decent education?" If your answer is "Yes" then you probably like strikes in the public system.

Union members not voting

Having spent almost all my working years in a Union environment. Our position always was, the members who did not vote were concidered to have voted with the majority.

Bumpf!!

Global BC - BCTF Compensation Demands:

Salary: 20% Increase;
Paid Leave: Another 10 days;
Retirement: 5% per year worked as bonus;

Total Compensation Request: $2.9 billion.
...................................

Nuts!!! Haha. That ain't a collective bargaining opening position!!

Prediction: Teacher's strike... will last for ~10 days... public anger builds... public opinion goes against BCTF executive... legislated settlement. End of story.

No wonder every time the teachers go on strike there's a jump in enrolment in private schools.

And for those wanting to take away government funding from private schools - be careful what you wish for.

Back during the 1975 provincial election, private schools were encouraging their students/parents to back the Socreds based upon their position on funding.

Any political party that gets themselves involved in that realm could be facing some heavy political push-back/blow-back.

To wit, the Filipino community in Vancouver is heavily Roman Catholic and are very tight-knit. Yet, they also, as an ethnic group/ demographic, vote heavily NDP.

As an example, Catholic St. Patrick's high school, at Main St. and E. 12th Ave. in Vancouver, is also heavily Filipino and that's near or in NDP leader Adrian Dix's Vancouver-Kingsway riding.

Should Adrian Dix follow such a political suicidal approach, he could very well lose his Vancouver-Kingsway riding in the next provincial election.