TheTyee.ca

Every few years governments hand the British Columbia Teachers Federation a gift. They manufacture a crisis, which serves to rouse teachers from their apolitical slumber and causes them to renew their commitment to their union. The BCTF was sorely in need of such a gift, reeling from the impact of essential services legislation, contract stripping and the general marginalizing that has been the fate of all unions in the Liberal New Era.

The last time the BCTF received such a gift was in 1987 when the Socreds removed mandatory membership in the BCTF and required that the union sign up each and every one of its 36,000 members. The sign-up campaign was like a revival meeting with teachers succumbing to the spirit of trade unionism and signing their union cards. The BCTF parlayed the sign-up into a militancy and unity that produced significant gains through three rounds of local bargaining.It has been lean times for the BCTF since the Harcourt government mandated provincial bargaining in 1996. Despite losing a generation of gains in the 2001 Liberal-legislated contract of January, BCTF leaders could do no better than to mobilize members for a one-day protest.

Whoops, struck a nerve

The Campbell government hit an unexpected nerve when it amended the Teaching Profession Act last May. Bill 51 attacked the College of Teachers, an institution that, ironically, the BCTF opposed when it was established in 1988. (The BCTF, which had long provided professional development for its teachers, fought the College because it was mandated to do the same, and because the college came from the much-loathed Socreds.) The College is the professional body for the province's 53,000 teachers (including administrators and independent school teachers), responsible for licensing and discipline. Education Minister Christy Clark nuked the College Council, dismissing the 15 counselors who had been endorsed by the BCTF and five government appointees.

Clark justified the move by saying the BCTF had too much influence over the College, and the College failed to define professional standards for teachers. An interim council featured 20 Clark appointees (hence the BCTF focus on Christy's College) with promises of a new college in the spring of 2004 with only eight elected members on a 20-member council.Initially, Clark's move on the College appeared headed for success. The legislation was applauded by parents and administrators, who shared Clark's enmity to the union. BCTF mobilization was swift. Union messaging to members focused on teachers' professional identity rather than on union solidarity. Educators bristled when told that Clark had singled out teaching for particular abuse in making it the only profession among more than thirty in the province that could not be entrusted with self-regulation. The BCTF also found fodder in another provision of Bill 51, which allowed public complaints about teachers to go directly to the college without requiring that concerned parents first deal with the teachers.

Blink number one

The union urged teachers to withhold their $90 union dues and by early December, when college by-law deadlines passed, more than half of BCTF members had put their dues into a BCTF trust fund rather than submit them to the college. The ploy put pressure on school boards as well as the minister because it would be elected boards rather than government or the college that would be required to fire teachers whose College membership lapsed. In the weeks leading up to Clark's retreat, more than 40 of the province's 60 school boards wrote letters to Clark protesting the legislation.

Clark's first blink was an extension of the deadline to pay college dues by a month. The appointed college, complicit in Clark's assault on the BCTF, pleading that it needed the time to update its database and continued to threaten teachers with penalties and ultimate dismissal if dues weren't paid by the new year.

Cheques poured into the BCTF and it was apparent that so many teachers would miss the fee deadline that it would pose a major problem for school trustees. Trustees would have some kind of challenge explaining to parents why their child's kindergarten teacher wasn't teaching any more because she had failed to fork up $90 to an imposed college controlled by the Minister of Education.

The final blink came at the open cabinet meeting. In a statement followed up by a letter to teachers, Clark denied that it had ever been her intention to deny teachers professional respect and the right of self-regulation. The tone of the missive was so saccharine that one colleague said he would return the letter to Clark with an attached note suggesting that he had inadvertently received a letter she intended for a private-school teacher. She promised the new College Council would have 12 elected members and that the public complaint process would be revised.

Bye, bye Clark?

Buoyed by Clark's Great Leap Backwards, the BCTF is holding fast and, before their trust moneys are forwarded the college, demanding a full list of changes. One is the assurance that the appointed college council will not tamper with the college bylaws prior to the election of the more teacherly council next spring. Look for the BCTF to abandon its practice of endorsing candidates for the college, a tactic that paid few dividends, as the face-saving bone for the Campbell government. By January, the Clark retreat will be complete and the BCTF will have been handed its biggest political victory in more than a decade.

Rumours abound that Clark will run federally in the spring. The notes she leaves to her successor will undoubtedly include the advice, "Let sleeping unions lie".

Kit Krieger is president of the West Vancouver Teachers' Association