Here's money for teachers

Teachers should take absurd 15% plus labour tax credit for film industry going to clear [UNSUPPORTED ALLEGATION REMOVED HERE...] in certain film unions and stop bailing out film workers with less education than teachers paid six figures. Many are [...AND HERE. -MODERATOR.] in film unions as absurd labour code protects them from civil and criminal actions. We do need more regulation on corrupt banks and unions. Some have sadly proven they can't be trusted. Time for teachers and social workers to get the big money the glamour types get for seriously stupid teen Films and TV shows.

Fascism, say what?

Fascism is the merger of capitalism and the state. No where is that clearer than in B.C. as we are only a hair breadth away from fascism. A "closed shop" workplace which means that you belong to the same union as everyone else because you all enjoy the negotiated benefits doesn't even come close to fascism.

All the comments show is that you want to reintroduce some kind of slavery or Dickensian workplace. What nonsense.

individual bargaining

dear Kredit, you show your Conservative/Fascist colours all the time...it was the provincial government that instituted the mass provincial bargaining....before that the individual school districts negotiated....but NOT with individual teachers. you are plainly anti union...but if you were a teacher, you would not be wanting to opt out of the BCTF...because if you were a teacher, you'd be smart enough to know that the BCTF is your shield, and guard, and protection from arbitrary and stupid principals and school boards...not to mention 19th century guys like Kredit....

right to work is great if you are the employer...but we taxpayers are NOT the employer of teachers...the provincial government is...we only pay for it.

right to work sucks if you want to have a decent living wage, and you are forced to work in a right to work environment...no one would willingly work in such a backwards, cheap wages, no labour rights, possibly unsafe working conditions kind of job....no one would willingly do so....unless blindsided by your backwards Conservative/Fascist propaganda...

only Employers and Government, the Corporatocrats that rule our lives, only they think that "Right to work" is a good policy....good for them? maybe...not so good for governments, because less wages means less income tax....and no pension savings, such that these people who you didn't pay a decent wage to, will be a bigger drain, later on the social safety net....all because you didn't want to pay a decent living wage....

Calling people fascist...

Is really dumb, ignorant and dulls the human rights violations that occured under Fascist governments worldwide.

Recommended reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascist#Authoritarianism

Kredtan introduced the term here.

We live in a Plutocracy. According to the description Plutocracy "is rule by the wealthy, or power provided by wealth." It is not a democracy and other than the rule being by more than one person, it may be applicable. If you are going to make comments that suggest that the world will be ruled by principles that definitely favour the corporate rich, (ie. right to work, etc.) that is what happens.

@kasi_visvanath,

Yes, I am anti-union, particularly anti-public union.. But that's necessary if one wishes to also be pro-taxpayer.

(And, BTW, the Conservatives, the Liberals and the NDP are indistinguishable from one another in any way that really matters...)

Sometimes I read 'logic' here that boggles the mind:

"...we taxpayers are NOT the employer of teachers...the provincial government is...we only pay for it."

That's very interesting. How we can pay to employ someone and not be their employer puzzles me.

"...these people who you didn't pay a decent wage to, will be a bigger drain, later on the social safety net....all because you didn't want to pay a decent living wage..."

No, they won't be a bigger drain on the social safety net if we downsize it,
hopefully making people more self-reliant.

They'll just stop spending taxpayers' money, cut back, and downsize their consumption. Canadian living standards one day will reach a point commensurate with their high personal debt levels and low productivity.

Read this article for further understanding

Here's a very good article to read if you are interested in at least understanding why the average teacher is angry, and willing to strike.

http://www.vancouversun.com/business/Province+needs+change+tactics+with+teachers/6196545/story.html

BTW rationalideas has hit upon something very important.

This made me so angry I sent

This made me so angry I sent Mr Abbott an email telling him exactly what I think of his government's tactics against working people. The worst part of it is that even after they have been thrown out...it will take years to fix the mess they have made...and if one looks south of the 49th, when people expectations are not met quickly enough...we live in a world of instant gratification on so many levels...but in matters of governance and economics the wheels grind ever so slowly while the 1% rapes and plunders...and people grow impatient and put the people who started the whole mess back in power...mark my words...the NDP will win in 2013...but within months...if the NDP have not fixed the economy, reinstituted higher corporate taxes, and rescinded all the repressive legislation by the BC Liberals...the people will be screaming for their heads...it never ceases to amaze me that the right can take years to destroy the country and people take it but if recovery is not quick...they throw them out immediately and put the ones that started the whole thing back in....

the troll kred says...

...Yes, I am anti-union, particularly anti-public union.. But that's necessary if one wishes to also be pro-taxpayer. ...

I hesitate to respond to shallow analysis, as it just encourages the trolls. However, this was too choice to pass up. We are all taxpayers. In fact, union wages contribute more than half of the income tax collected on our behalf in BC. It is always dangerous to point out such an obvious point. The trolls will just redirect their spew. Union wages and collective bargaining built this province. Read McMartins report i the Tyee on what really happened to our social contract http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2012/02/27/BC-Tax-Cut-Era/ . But, that is too easy for the trolls to understand.

Kindergarten libertarians

I'm willing to bet Kreditiste survives on a cheque every month from the government.

Just sayin

@netzerofair

Netzerofair said: "Calling people fascist... Is really dumb, ignorant and dulls the human rights violations that occured under Fascist governments worldwide."

This is an absurd claim. It is true to say that the sloppy use of the term 'fascist' as a general political epithet makes for tedious, uninspiring, dead-end discussion. But the equally sloppy manner in which you pretend to understand (or perhaps willfully misunderstand) the content of many of the commenters' use of this concept belies an ideological commitment on your part. A commitment to what? precisely? This remains to be seen. At any rate, your comment would make about as much sense and remain equally vacuous if you were to substitute the word capitalism for fascism and then provide the wiki-link to 'capitalism'. In other words, your comment would remain purely and solipsistically in the realm of rhetoric, with no link to the discussion at hand, and no apparent aim except to shut your discursive opponent(s) up... forgive me this, but that sounds kinda ... fascist?

Moreover, when someone tries to restrict the use of a politico-economic concept, one that lends itself rather well to a variety of interpretations (just like liberalism, capitalism, marxism, etc), to a certain historical period, thereby claiming that concept hereafter anachronistic (and in a weird twist, simultaneously sacred), it is often true that the person in question is trying to smuggle aspects/elements of the concept in question into contemporary political discourse in such a way as those elements might be seen to be more legitimate than if they were simply reintroduced along with all the baggage accompanying the concept in question. This was true for much of the past few decades with respect to 'capitalism'. No one talked about it, seeing it as an outmoded concept, only to have it re-consolidate systemic power just as it plunged us all into 'crisis'.

At any rate, I guess my question for you is this: what, exactly, is your problem with the way that political concept is being used here and how does it contribute to the discussion around the right to collective bargaining?

@Kreditanstalt

Kreditanstalt wrote: "why can't school districts sign individual contracts with teachers whom they see as cost-efficient and competent, one by one?"

Kredit... school districts do this. This involves what's called, in the biz, a job interview. All teachers have one. But it's not up to the employer or financial backers (that's us the tax payers, a group that, as other commenters pointed out, includes teachers and other unionized people) to decide whether existing employees of some shop or profession should collectively negotiate working conditions with their employers. That's the prerogative of the employees themselves. Incidentally, teachers who don't want to belong to collective bargaining units can seek employment elsewhere (eg. private schools). But, while I am not a teacher, I think we're about to see how much support there is in the teaching profession for the collective bargaining process when teachers vote on whether to strike this week.

In part their vote will, I think, be a reaction to shyster Abott's attempt at his best ronald reaghan union buster impersonation. My bet is there'll be real strong support for scaled up job action among the teachers.

At any rate, I can't see why you whine and cry the management line as though it's some universally held perspective on things. Not everyone cares whether management gets things their way. You might even find, come the next election, that most people don't care. In fact, you might be surprised to find that some of us even think working people should have a degree of autonomy from market-based 'efficiency' mechanisms. Then again, the way you keep plugging the same faith-based ideological line suggests that you won't notice any of this. Oh well.

Kreditanstalt

If that law were abolished, we wouldn't need to go through this regular rigmarole every year or two...we could replace them with more cost-efficient, professional staff.

I think your strict adherence to contemporary libertarian ideology over-looks the current reality. That reality being that we effectively live under a corporatocracy directed by plutocrats.

To wit, and correct me if I am wrong, you champion a free market place and decentralization of power from state to the individual; unto itself, admirable in most regards. But privatization at this stage of corporatist rule is not decentralizing power at all.

We know that state sovereignty has already been significantly neutered by banking interests and centralized wealth. By removing any of the state's remaining sovereign entrails, the theoretical counter-balance against corporate totalitarianism, we only help ensure its complete demise.

If the duality is correct (i.e., 'no government-good vs government-bad'), you might be onto something. But in this world, this privatization plan gives rise to a new problem. The removal of any remaining state sovereignty simply relocates more control into private and thus corporate hands. The result is self evident: we have unwittingly centralized the power of the corporatocracy. We have made what governs over us even stronger. And I highly doubt that that is your objective.

So your idealistic and admirable calls are counter-intuitive, at least in the theoretical sense. I say theoretical for there is an easy argument to be made against this view: power has already been fully centralized and the government is just the public pacifier signifying democratic hope to prevent unrest at this stage of the corporate coup. This renders the prior analysis moot.

Skywalker

What is necessary is an understanding of the role education plays in a civilized society. It is the basis for advances in technology, science, medicine, you name it.

OK. How about eugenics? Behaviour psychology? Propaganda? Social engineering? Scientific racism?

The role education, and by that I mean schooling, plays in 'civilized society' has far more to do institutionally with these topics than the talking points we are propagandised to believe as its primary objective.

But like most everything in life, we cannot easily separate the smooth from the crunchy. :)

Kreditanstalt has never worked at a bad employer

If he/she had, they would have been thanking God for their union, or wishing they had one. I have been there and every day I was grateful to the union that stood up for me. The employer - worker relationship is biased in favour of the employer and a union assists in levelling the balance.

Teachers had better suck it up. Healthcare workers too

People who are paid from the public purse had better get used to a shrinking resource. We cannot afford to pay 40% of our provincial budget to health care, nor can we afford to pay teachers more money when student enrollment is declining.

We need to close schools and retire teachers. It is that simple. I attended the local school district professional development day recently. There was no one in the room of over 1,500 teachers making less that $44,000 per year. Many were making $78,000 per year.

Newsflash folks: you are doing better than most of the parents of the kids you teach.

I have two degrees and a technical diploma from seven years of university education and I made $25,000 gross last year, or $11,500 after expenses. You are living in Cloud Cuckoo Land and you need to take a break.

Teaching is the epitome of social sustainability-in-action and if enrollment is down, the number of schools and teachers needed has to go down too, in the same way the Snowshoe hare populations control the predators supported by them as prey.

Teachers are getting used to the idea that THERE IS NO MORE MONEY. True, the politicians keep giving themselves sweetheart pay raises and they are all a bunch of vampires feeding off the public purse. Truth be told, the are the Top Predators in the system and the only way to reduce their demands are with a big rifle -metaphorically speaking of course.

Greed seems to have our political leaders by the throat and it won't let go, but that does not alter the fact that THERE IS NO MORE MONEY. The teacher's dispoute is a Zero Sum Game. We can only spend the same nickel once and we have already spent it twice.

We cannot mortgage our kid's futures for today's teachers wages. IT ISN'T SUSTAINABLE.

I have a solution and it could work. All teachers should be hired a independent contractors, not as employees. As independent contractors, they could still get benefits but they would be able to deduct their travel expense and any other expenses from their before-tax income. That would include motgage interest for one. They would end up making more after-tax income than at present, and they would au8nderstand tyhe suppy-and-demand nature fo their business. To ease the burden of lower income, they coulod job-share.

They would have to reduce their expectations, but they would become more independent thinkers and would realise that the teaching profession should be no longer tied so closely to the school system.

They are always talking about new methods of education; now is the time to practice what they preach.

@gnam

"...tax payers, a group that, as other commenters pointed out, includes teachers and other unionized people) to decide whether existing employees of some shop or profession should collectively negotiate working conditions with their employers. That's the prerogative of the employees themselves. Incidentally, teachers who don't want to belong to collective bargaining units can seek employment elsewhere (eg. private schools..."

Oh, woe is us! We here in B.C. are really burdened with a class vs. class view of society. It's "banksters" vs. "people", "Corporations" vs. "workers", "99%" vs. "1%", "management" vs. "labour", "capital" vs. "labour", "left" vs. "right", "NDP" vs. "Liberal" and "Dunsmuir" vs. "Hawthornthwaite"...it's gone on forever, perhaps an unfortunate legacy of the British.

It's never "personal freedom" vs. "government power", which is gradually coming. The non-aggression principle, coupled with strong protection of private property, should extend to this too.

It,s all well and good to say the employees alone should have the prerogative of "bargaining collectively", gnam. But the fact remains that the asinine and biased law forces the employer at gunpoint to recognize this collectivity and to "negotiate" with it "in good faith".

If the employer fails to do so, mediation, arbitration and other gross interferences in the free market and free contract come into play, all effectively at the point of the government gun.

That gun is solidly on the side of coddled and protected high-paid labour. Capital is punished, repressed, taxed, controlled and stolen. (Which is, perhaps, why there is so little real capital around these days...!)

Merely saying that those not wishing to join this union can go seek employment (at much lower wages) in private schools is fatuous.

Government teachers are "compensated" far beyond what they would likely earn were they exposed to the cold but honest winds of market competition, as are the unemployed...

Granville

Since when is our resource shrinking?

Has BC's GDP fallen for the last 10 years? How is it then we've become poorer in your mind?

What has fallen is our median wage. From $47,605 in 1980 to $42,230 in 2005.

Our wages have fallen in spite of growing wealth. As Will McMartin points out, we've been taxing the haves less and the have-nots more. And its common logic to realize that taxing the have-nots will produce less revenue than taxing the haves.

Prior to the 80's our society worked better. Perhaps we need to return to the days before free trade and Friedman economics.

Kreditanstalt

Employers are "forced at gunpoint.."?

Show me a single example of where the government has held a gun to an employer's head. I think that would be big news.

If you think you live in a police state drive south till you hit the border. You will notice there is no Canadian border guard to stop you. Your first contact with a border guard will be an American one.

Hop on a plane and try to leave the country. You will notice no Canadian border guard will stop you.

Your police state exists only in your imagination.

Kreditanstalt

Sigh....unions are favoured by employers, because employers are a lazy lot, and don't want to bargain with each and every employee. Likely even you can see that bargaining with some 40,000 individuals would take up the entire year. So the government, corporations, and other large employers sanctioned the creation of "collective bargaining" so they could sign off once instead of 40,000+ times. Their laziness occasionally backfires, but in the whole, it has worked well for them.

Whereever DO you get your weird notions from?

HOW WELL WE HAVE BEEN TAUGHT

In the immortal words of former US President Bush " if you aren't with us you're against us". Here in BC it would seem that we are either for the government or against the government, for the teachers or against the teachers. Judging from the comments posted above, too many of us follow Bush's doctrine.

Seemingly we have learned our lessons well, and have adopted the "American system of negotiation". That is the "adversarial" system a system of "us" against "them" in which both sides start out with a big stick and beat on each other until one side loses.

Many countries in Europe have adopted a more cooperative system of negotiation in which both parties work together to create a win, win resolution. This generally proves to be a more socially acceptable solution, it may cause a dip in profit margins but is still a win, win, as long as those dips are not so severe as to kill the goose.

The wise labor leader knows that to take care of the employer is of prime importance as a job lost is gone forever. Also the wise employer knows that a happy, well payed workforce is more productive and more willing to go that extra mile when needed.

Could we say that these wise employers and labor leaders were "taught" to be wise, or did they just go borrow their wisdom from a bank somewhere?

Here in BC our government is not behaving like the social entity it was elected to be. They instead act like a corporation using the American adversarial model of negotiation only to achieve an end that has little, or no relevance to the social good and or future of this province.

Good governance requires much more than our presently elected politicians seem to understand. That would be why they are using the big stick approach with our teachers.

Had these neo-liberals been properly educated or had educated themselves, they would realize that they are not the CEO's of some business but rather the shepherds of a social organization.

Ours is a social organization that must be willing to maintain it's integrity even at the expense of taxing the companies that profit so much from doing business here in our province and in our country.

@RickW

"So the government, corporations, and other lare employers sanctioned the creation of 'collective bargaining'..."

Even if that were true - which I doubt, because I see government is interjectng itself - the employer (taxpayers) are not represented.

In real life, if the sanctity of the private contract were respected, government wouldn't be involved at all...

We have no ability to negotiate freely. If I were to individually hire you and a half dozen of your friends to do yardwork for me five days a week,and you all and I agreed $5.00/hour/no "benefits", no one else should be interfering.

But private contracts apparently are government business here. It would be like someone holding a gun to my head and dictating that our contract is null and void. I'd be forced to "recognize" the "right" of my seven employees to NOT fulfill the terms of the agreement while simultaneously preventing me from hiring anyone else who would.

Real "rights" aren't granted by government edict: they're innate, natural and human. To imply that these "labour laws" are some kind of natural, deserved and just development is silly.

I'll agree that any employer voluntarily consenting to "recognize" a union and "bargain" with it, with no government interference at all, would be entirely free to do so. But I'll also bet none would.

from where I sit...

I'm a grandmother with five treasures in the school system, from grade one to grade eleven. I am upset, distressed, and angry at the way the Liberals are treating education. Now we are being given the sob story that we are broke, there's no money, it's impossible to do a better job of funding the future...but we had money pouring without hesitation for the Olympics, they can always find a few million for their endless studies into things we already know, and there doesn't seem to be any hesitation when it comes to spending public funds on yet another publicity campaign none-too-subtly aimed at convincing people to support their particular form on non-thought.

It may well be that some teachers aren't fully trained or the "best" for the job...that's no reason to warehouse kids in overcrowded classrooms. It's no reason to punish the dedicated teachers whose lives are focussed on the kids they teach and for whom they set an example.

Maybe that's what sticks in the throat of the phillistines; the teachers demonstrate to the next generation how to live, how to be, how to deal with each other. Gawd forbid the kids see their teachers as self determined individuals proud of their work and committed to making society a better place for all.

Jeebus, if the entire future generations were to model their lives on what they see demonstrated by their teachers, they might well grow up to vote and to reject the small minded punitive and very mean (in every sense of the word) behaviour of the Liebral party!

@Kreditanstalt

Should China and the other sweat shop countries have true competition from us your system of commerce would fail as we the poor would no longer be able to afford to buy the products of your great non-union enterprises. You Sir, and your fellow capitalists would go broke.

If we let the marketplace decide I will bet against your anti fair wage stance and say that true capitalism will protect it's markets by insuring that the consumers are there, with enough money to drive your marketplace.

Would your most valuable self work for $5.00/hour/no "benefits", I think not. At that wage you would have to work 14 hours a day (no overtime of course) just to pay for lunch and your buss fare. You may own a car but you could never afford to insure it and pay rent as well.

kredit - and alternatives

Kredit offers here what the article title asks for, an alternative way to bargain with teachers. Back in the 1980's I heard this individual contract stuff from a fellow who would come into the school staff room to pick up his wife, who was teaching in our public high school.(She was under the same contract that all of us were under.)
After 1988(or so) Administrators were under the individual contracts that you mention, but, very quickly, they ended up bargaining as a group. I guess both boards and admins found advantages to this.
In a way, libertarians have a pretty good deal in BC for educating their kids. A person can, fairly easily, home school their kids. And a true libertarian could hire a tutor to teach one's kids French/Physics/carpentry/botany/...or whatever is ok with the local board and provincial curriculum standards.

Sometimes I think that libertarians have a hard time thinking about people working collectively, and the idea of a group acting for its members. I often have a hard time with it too. Trying to handle the actions or words of spokespersons for business corporations, lobby groups, pr firms, service clubs, unions, and cabinets as being differetn than what an individual person might do or say can be confusing to me. I remember, often, losing arguments and votes in my union, and then speaking publically trying to represent the union and the people I am repsonsible to, not my own position on an issue. I think libertarians find this acting or speaking as a group very difficult,perhaps frustrating, to deal with.

It is possible that the present structure for the bargaining can work if the politics of the governing party can be minimized. In early 1980's there was a structure in place that had bumps in it; it traded job action rights for arbitration. But the government of the day meddled with that arbitration system and messed it up. Our present system seems to allow the governing party quite a bit of 'meddling' room.
Perhaps there is a way to get the governing party out of it.

When the gvt is in a beef with teachers like this, it is a big deal. But other groups have had similar beefs with this gvt (did not judges take the gvt to court over this stuff? I believe that the doctors are coming up for a renewed deal with the gvt.) With teachers - everybody has a strong opinion.

@Kredit

You said: "It's never "personal freedom" vs. "government power", which is gradually coming."

Paranoid much? The fact is that government power has been on the decline for the past 40 years. You're right that personal freedom is also on the decline, but it's being lost to systemic imperatives.

Then you said: "Merely saying that those not wishing to join this union can go seek employment (at much lower wages) in private schools is fatuous."

Actually the wages aren't that much lower. Private school employers have to pay their teachers close to what the rest of teachers in BC make in order to compete. But more importantly, you make a good point. It is ridiculous that teachers in private schools, who receive the same professional training and incur the same levels of professional training debt should have to work with fewer benefits or job security. Those teachers should organize and bargain collectively with their employers.

Then you said: "Government teachers are "compensated" far beyond what they would likely earn were they exposed to the cold but honest winds of market competition"

Except in this scenario the only competition would be between teachers and not amongst employers, who in this case have the collective bargaining power of a near industrial monopoly employer. All you show by suggesting that teachers would be worse off in the absence of collective bargaining is that if teachers and workers are to pursue their interests (and the interests of students) then the only realistic course of action is collective bargaining.

Then you said: "Real 'rights' aren't granted by government edict: they're innate, natural and human. To imply that these "labour laws" are some kind of natural, deserved and just development is silly."

Exactly what rights are you talking about, these innate, natural, mystical fairy rights of yours? Talk about silly... but this could go on all day with you. When you finish writing your sophomore BADMIN exams get back to me.

@gnam

Thank you for your civility, and you raise some good points.

"Collective bargaining" is an entirely artificial beast. In a truly free market for both labour and capital, it would not exist...

In other wors, were it not supported by edict of force (law) - the government gun - it would not exist.

You may ask, "why not?"

IMO, the answer lies in the interplay between capital and labour. We live in a society of fiat money, constantly increasing debt levels, declining net worth, increasing "money" supply and a near-zero savings rate, even in today's fiat "money". Real (as opposed to nominal) interest rates have been held negative for years now, resulting in hardship for retirees or anyone else naive enough to save in paper dollars.

The outcome of this is that there is very little unencumbered, REAL capital out there and free for deployment. A lot of speculation, though. Yes, there is a great deal of "money" and a LOT of credit, all of which is depreciating in real terms against any essential real good - gold, food, gasoline, energy...

Yet there is also a massive oversupply of labor. Loads of people are either unemployed, underemployed, living in basements, part-time workers, dissatisfied with their wages, staying in school, retiring early, speculating in stocks, sharing houses. These are all in competition for, especially, the very limited higher-paid work available.

For government to interfere in the labour market in any way is reprehensible because it preserves highly-paid positions for a select few at the cost of penury for the masses trying to move up, or even GET any job.

Were government teachers - or indeed many private school teachers (whose salaries are as you say 'influenced' by artificially-high government salaries) exposed to the free market, they would immediately face competition from thousanda upon thousands of highly-competent potential teachers looking for work. Many of them are normal school graduates, but many more - probably equally capable - are not. Many foreign teachers should be allowed to compete, too. Perhaps among the competition are holders of Master's degrees or Doctorates; perhaps they are experienced teachers elsewhere, or perhaps they just have a natural aptitude for teaching.

Should the employer - the taxpayer - be denied these choices? Should he be forced to pay wages that would not stand in a free market and render competing teachers jobless?

It's unethical and immoral...

It's unethical and immoral...

To force our children to be taught by the lowest priced teachers who would in turn be the least educated and thus willing to work for less than professional rates is "unethical and immoral... Highly-competent potential teachers looking for work are not going to look for work in Kreditanstalt's idyllic marketplace.

Frank

Employers are "forced at gunpoint.."?

I am pretty sure he means the figurative gun of sovereign power, particularly when administered in excess of democratic principles. But I've been down this road with you before, Frank. So either acknowledge that a coercive, often non-negotiable, power of state exists or stop being coy. I cannot believe for a moment that you don't already possess this rudimentary understanding.

If you think you live in a police state drive south till you hit the border. You will notice there is no Canadian border guard to stop you. Your first contact with a border guard will be an American one.

Hop on a plane and try to leave the country. You will notice no Canadian border guard will stop you.

Seriously Frank? It is exactly the same scenario going the other way. I've done it literally hundreds of times so unless my experiences have been anomalies ... ;)

Your police state exists only in your imagination.

Let's see. Our airways and shores and borders are jointly monitored and/or protected. The free exchange of personal information between the countries is now almost seamless. Each country can monitor and physically chase a 'suspect' - ie, anyone their discretion decides is possibly a problem to their security -- freely into the other nation. The government's of both nations can call upon immediate, reciprocal military intervention against civil unrest. The civilian police forces on both sides have been militarized. etc.

The surveillance and security state is real, Frank. For all effective purposes, there is no difference between America and Canada in this regard. It's you view of Canadian independence, freedom, and privacy which is imaginary.

Working conditions

Professor Marjorie Griffin Cohen suggested that teachers need to get a clear message about working conditions out to the public in order to gain greater support. Instead wages are framed by the government and media as the main issue. Teacher messaging is difficult in the corporate media and advertising is expensive. Media manipulation is a central part of the democratic deficit in Canada. Little wonder that free collective bargaining and public services are under attack and are being weakened by right wing liberal and conservative governments.

@kreditanstald

Against my better judgment, I am going to respond. There're a lot of unquestioned assumptions in your claims so it's a bit hard to know where to begin. But here goes.

First, what fairy tale are you currently living in that makes your arbitrary classification of 'free' market relations seem 'natural' while the legal system and its attendant provisions for collective bargaining are somehow 'artificial', or at any rate more artificial than the alternative you propose? The fact is that exploitative politico-economic systems of human relations have to be maintained by force (whether that force be legal or otherwise) is, historically speaking, the most 'natural' (if by natural you mean statistically common) thing on record - but since you never bother to tell us what you mean, you mostly appear to be blowing hot air.

As an economist (if indeed that is what you're studying), you're supposed, as David Graeber points out, to base your claims and theories on empirically verifiable data and observation, either from the contemporary data record or the historical record. Just as economists waste all kinds of time attempting to baffle us with a lot of fantasy about 'barter' as grounds for exchange relations leading to the emergence of money, you make a lot of noise about the 'natural' basis of the free market without ever gracing us with a justification for why we should accept your propositions.

You then treat us to a jumble of platitudes about the current monetary system and some of the crises of over-production related to contemporary capitalism, while at the same time, throwing another red herring into the discussion - "REAL capital." What all this has directly to do with teacher contract negotiations remains more than a little obscure since you never really define your key concepts or provide a direct answer to your own rhetorical question - why collective bargaining wouldn't exist in a free market.

Your claims about an oversupply of labor simply parrot the status quo economic talking points without ever addressing the way in which this oversupply is manufactured. In the case of teachers the oversupply is manufactured by disemboweling the education system and forcing labor to produce results with greater intensity. This has the effect of decreasing the quality of service while simultaneously pushing down the cost of labor on the market.

At any rate, this is turing into a discussion for another time and place... somewhere with more beer. What remains true is that you haven't made your case. In a free market labor has just as much impetus to organize. The 'state gun', as you're fond of calling it, is necessary to avoid having collectivized labor run your precious capital "into the dustbin of history." (sorry, couldn't resist the Trotsky quote).

(see Graeber here: http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/09/david-graeber-on-the-invention-of-money-%E2%80%93-notes-on-sex-adventure-monomaniacal-sociopathy-and-the-true-function-of-economics.html)

You get what you paid for

Folks, you can complain all you want - the bottom line is you get what you paid for!

1. Good teachers - and those who can - will leave and go where they will get respect and pay that they can live on while educating the future generation.

2. Teachers who have too much on their plate already will burn out and leave the job so those willing to work for $10/hr can replace them.

3. And those who can't will do an ok job and will be the teachers we'll remember for all our lives in a negative way.

Congratulation Liberal government. You are digging the grave of the future generation.

Special vs normal

What makes me the most angry is that it seems to be ok to mix special need children with normal children and expect our kids to be nice and inclusive.

Yet we, as society can't say the same. Or are we inclusive of those with special needs? One just have to walk to downtown East side.

We should put special need adults together with normal folks in the workforce and let management deal with the problem that arises from such arrangement.

Children who are vulnerable and need special attention are being treated as third class citizens in this province by their government.

As a matter of fact - by not respecting teachers and improve school conditions and teaching conditions - this government let ALL children down in this province.

It should come as no surprise then that child poverty is the highest in BC.