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楼主 / 凌儿。
- 时间: 2014-7-03 16:53这篇是老师写的:
B.C. Teachers' Fight: It IS All About the Money
The truth about this current battle between B.C. teachers and the B.C. Liberal government is that it IS all about the money. It is all about the money that it will take to restore class size and composition language that was illegally stripped 12 years ago.
It is all about the money it will take to restore specialist teachers and classroom support. It is all about the money it will take to restore school psychologists and counsellors to help assess students' needs in a timely manner. It is also all about the money it will take to bring B.C. teachers' salaries closer to the national average.
No matter how much caring resides in the heart of a teacher, one cannot buy resources for the classroom with warm feelings. One cannot increase a support worker's time with hugs and kind words. No matter how much love and devotion one feels for a child with a learning disability, those feelings will not manifest into more one-to-one time.
Teachers have become accustomed to hearing the multitude of opinions/insults that are voiced daily on all types of media forums. One place to avoid in particular: the comments section of any article to do with our current bargaining situation. The opinion I find most perplexing -- and which is repeated often by media, many parents and members of the public -- is: if teachers really cared about the kids, they would drop their ridiculous salary and benefit demands and focus only on the class size and composition issue. This is in fact, something that B.C. teachers have done in the past, and is one of the reasons why we rank among the lowest paid educators in Canada.
Where did this idea come from, that improvements in learning conditions should come in exchange for teacher's salary and benefits? Why are teachers constantly held responsible for subsidizing our "public" education system? Why should improvements be gained on the backs of teachers? Perhaps it is because we work with children and do value and care deeply about our students, that we have become an easy target for this type of argument.
I regularly see comments on social media such as:
• Teachers pretend they care and then ask for more $$$
• If you really cared about the kids, you wouldn't ask for a signing bonus.
• Haha...Yes, for the kids! Give me $5k and more benefits too! For the kids!
• Choose one or the other to bargain for -- salary increase or class size/comp
Since when is there an inverse correlation between how much teachers care about students and how much of a wage increase they ask for through bargaining? In any collective bargaining process, salary, benefits and working conditions are pivotal to the negotiations. In fact, most public sectors only bargain for those improvements.
Teachers are in a highly complex and unique position in that on top of having to negotiate our working conditions, we also have to advocate and negotiate for the learning conditions of all of the students in the province. Public sector workers cannot just be compared to each other as if we all have the same common denominator.
Premier Christy Clark and Education Minister Peter Fassbender repeatedly refer to reaching a deal with support workers in five days. No one is happier than teachers that support workers were able to come to a deal; they are our partners in the classroom, and have been our incredible allies through this challenging time. But why can't it be that easy for teachers?
The other public sector agreements that are constantly referred to do not share the unique challenges that our negotiations do. Their contracts were not illegally stripped. They have not had negotiate on behalf of students. They do not have the same complicated history with Christy Clark. They do not have two Supreme Court rulings affirming and validating the collective agreement we had in place before the 2002 strips. According to the Supreme Court, that collective agreement should still be in place.
B.C. teachers are in a battle that is singularly unique to our profession and our history. We are up against a government that's attempting to have us sign an agreement that would remove the gains we have made in court -- and to call them gains is actually a fallacy. They are not gains, but rather language that teachers had fought for many years before.
So really, we are fighting to move backwards. Backwards to a time before we had the worst student-teacher ratio in Canada, before B.C. students were funded $1,000 less than other Canadian students. Backwards to a time when students with special needs had a team of specialists to support integration in the regular classroom. Backwards to a time before all of the mandated zeros brought us well below teachers' average salaries in most other provinces.
It IS all about the money. To restore the quality of education that has been profoundly eroded over the past 12 years, and to bring teachers closer to (not even equal with) the average compensation teachers receive across the country, is going to have to be about the money.
www.huffingtonpost.ca/...trike-2014 -
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- 时间: 2014-7-03 17:12More summer classrooms cancelled as 2nd mediator bows out of teacher talks
Summer school cancellations continued to roll in Wednesday, as a second proposed mediator declined to get involved in the ongoing labour dispute between B.C.'s striking teachers and their employer.
Vancouver, Burnaby and Maple Ridge/Pitt Meadows school districts are the latest districts to cancel their summer school programs.
"This is really unfortunate," said VSB superintendent Steve Cardwell in a posted statement. "However, the reality is that without our teaching and support staff due to the prospect of picket lines at our school sites, summer school will not be able to happen."
The province's 60 school boards deliberated Wednesday on how to handle the dispute's impact on summer school, which the teachers have previously announced they'll picket.
Last week, the B.C. Labour Relations Board ruled schools must hold summer classes for students in Grades 10 to 12 who failed a course, but only if they won't be on the timetable next year.
However, Vancouver, Burnaby, Maple Ridge/Pitt Meadows and Prince George say they have no courses meeting the board's conditions, and will cancel all summer classes as a result.
Chilliwack, Williams Lake and Campbell River have also said they will cancel summer classes, but have not said if the board's ruling will force them to offer courses considered essential.
Abbotsford says it will make courses the labour board deemed essential accessible online.
Last week, both parties approached B.C. Supreme Court Judge Stephen Kelleher about mediating the dispute, but following "exploratory discussions," he decided against proceeding any further.
Kelleher's decision came after veteran mediator Vince Ready had already declined due to his work schedule.
Union president Jim Iker pointed a finger at the government for putting up an obstacle to bargaining, saying it wanted a "series of unworkable preconditions" prior to entering mediation.
But Education Minister Peter Fassbender refuted the charge, saying the government has repeatedly stated it will not divert from the wage offer it has agreed to with many other public sector unions. -
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- 时间: 2014-7-03 17:24The focus has been on wages, benefits and sick time,
Currently teachers have $500/year for massage (therapy) and now they are asking for 3,000 per year. It would be $15,000 over the length of the contract. There is another $600 (moving to $700) per year without a prescription.
"Massage Therapist and physiotherapist as of 2014 $3,000 per year if services prescribed by doctor" That's from the latest proposal.
www.bcpsea.bc.ca/docum...sition.pdf -
- 时间: 2014-7-03 17:28B.C. teachers' strike: 2nd potential mediator refuses job
In a separate statement, Education Minister Peter Fassbender blamed the teachers for the failure.
"It was recognized that if the parties were in the same zone, mediation might help land a settlement. Unfortunately, through these exploratory discussions it became explicitly clear that the BCTF executive would not commit to tabling a set of demands that fall in the same affordability zone as the other public sector agreements reached to date." -
- 时间: 2014-7-03 17:31
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- 时间: 2014-7-03 23:16
凌儿。 写道:这篇是老师写的:
B.C. Teachers' Fight: It IS All About the Money
The truth about this current battle between B.C. teachers and the B.C. Liberal government is that it IS all about the money. It is all about the money that it will take to restore class size and composition language that was illegally stripped 12 years ago.
It is all about the money it will take to restore specialist teachers and classroom support. It is all about the money it will take to restore school psychologists and counsellors to help assess students' needs in a timely manner. It is also all about the money it will take to bring B.C. teachers' salaries closer to the national average.
No matter how much caring resides in the heart of a teacher, one cannot buy resources for the classroom with warm feelings. One cannot increase a support worker's time with hugs and kind words. No matter how much love and devotion one feels for a child with a learning disability, those feelings will not manifest into more one-to-one time.
Teachers have become accustomed to hearing the multitude of opinions/insults that are voiced daily on all types of media forums. One place to avoid in particular: the comments section of any article to do with our current bargaining situation. The opinion I find most perplexing -- and which is repeated often by media, many parents and members of the public -- is: if teachers really cared about the kids, they would drop their ridiculous salary and benefit demands and focus only on the class size and composition issue. This is in fact, something that B.C. teachers have done in the past, and is one of the reasons why we rank among the lowest paid educators in Canada.
Where did this idea come from, that improvements in learning conditions should come in exchange for teacher's salary and benefits? Why are teachers constantly held responsible for subsidizing our "public" education system? Why should improvements be gained on the backs of teachers? Perhaps it is because we work with children and do value and care deeply about our students, that we have become an easy target for this type of argument.
I regularly see comments on social media such as:
• Teachers pretend they care and then ask for more $$$
• If you really cared about the kids, you wouldn't ask for a signing bonus.
• Haha...Yes, for the kids! Give me $5k and more benefits too! For the kids!
• Choose one or the other to bargain for -- salary increase or class size/comp
Since when is there an inverse correlation between how much teachers care about students and how much of a wage increase they ask for through bargaining? In any collective bargaining process, salary, benefits and working conditions are pivotal to the negotiations. In fact, most public sectors only bargain for those improvements.
Teachers are in a highly complex and unique position in that on top of having to negotiate our working conditions, we also have to advocate and negotiate for the learning conditions of all of the students in the province. Public sector workers cannot just be compared to each other as if we all have the same common denominator.
Premier Christy Clark and Education Minister Peter Fassbender repeatedly refer to reaching a deal with support workers in five days. No one is happier than teachers that support workers were able to come to a deal; they are our partners in the classroom, and have been our incredible allies through this challenging time. But why can't it be that easy for teachers?
The other public sector agreements that are constantly referred to do not share the unique challenges that our negotiations do. Their contracts were not illegally stripped. They have not had negotiate on behalf of students. They do not have the same complicated history with Christy Clark. They do not have two Supreme Court rulings affirming and validating the collective agreement we had in place before the 2002 strips. According to the Supreme Court, that collective agreement should still be in place.
B.C. teachers are in a battle that is singularly unique to our profession and our history. We are up against a government that's attempting to have us sign an agreement that would remove the gains we have made in court -- and to call them gains is actually a fallacy. They are not gains, but rather language that teachers had fought for many years before.
So really, we are fighting to move backwards. Backwards to a time before we had the worst student-teacher ratio in Canada, before B.C. students were funded $1,000 less than other Canadian students. Backwards to a time when students with special needs had a team of specialists to support integration in the regular classroom. Backwards to a time before all of the mandated zeros brought us well below teachers' average salaries in most other provinces.
It IS all about the money. To restore the quality of education that has been profoundly eroded over the past 12 years, and to bring teachers closer to (not even equal with) the average compensation teachers receive across the country, is going to have to be about the money.
www.huffingtonpost.ca/...trike-2014
写这么多字这老师太过分了
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- 时间: 2014-7-03 23:30
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- 时间: 2014-7-04 00:24
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- 时间: 2014-7-15 16:51Teachers strike gong show to simmer all summer
The long, hot days of summer may have arrived, but any long, hot bargaining between the government and striking teachers is more like a shimmering desert mirage.
Though both sides in the bitter dispute said they were willing to negotiate in the summer to get a deal, talks have wilted in the July heat.
It’s been two weeks since a B.C. Supreme Court judge held “exploratory discussions” with the two sides and concluded any mediation effort would be useless.
The reason? The sides are so far apart it wouldn’t be worth the effort. No formal talks have been held since and none are scheduled.
The fear for kids and parents is the nasty strike/lockout will drag on through the fall, and result in even more cancelled classes in September.
Would Premier Christy Clark tolerate that? She suggested otherwise Monday.
“I am not content to let this simmer,” Clark told reporters, sparking a blaze of social-media speculation that she might recall the legislature and force a contact on teachers.
But government insiders quickly clarified there was no such plan, insisting it was up to teachers to reduce contract demands before anything happens.
Clark herself repeated the government’s familiar refrain.
“Every week, our negotiator’s on the phone to the BCTF inviting them to come back to the table, but here’s the thing: We’ve settled agreements with about 50 per cent of the public sector, including support workers that are in the classrooms working right beside teachers.”
In other words, if school secretaries, custodians (don’t call us “janitors,” I’ve been told) and education assistants can cut a deal with this big, bad government, why can’t the teachers?
And Clark’s reference to other public-sector workers is a reminder that half the government’s workforce, including nurses, haven’t settled yet.
The word from Clark’s west-wing office: We bargained affordable deals with half our workers, we want affordable deals with the other half. Don’t screw it up now by caving in to the teachers’ union.
The union, of course, sees it a different way. In their view, the government illegally gutted their contract and increased their workload. The union proved it in court and now they’re owed restitution in the form of a sweeter contract than everyone else.
But what can you do when the government’s balanced budget is teetering on a razor’s edge, and the woman in charge has nursed a grudge against this union for over a decade?
The teachers’ supporters know the situation is grim for the B.C. Teachers’ Federation and are pleading for third-party intervention.
“Christy Clark says she won’t let the dispute simmer. Well then lead. Binding arbitration now,” Vancouver school trustee Mike Lombardi, a former BCTF staffer, said on Twitter.
But binding arbitration is just another mirage for the union at this point.
The government argues the teachers’ demands would cost $2 billion. The union disputes that number, but the potential risk of losing an arbitrator’s decision is a gamble the government won’t take.
The gong show can’t go on forever. But it appears it will go on for a while yet. -
- 时间: 2014-7-15 17:49
B.C. 教师罢工
