BCTF Court Case - Score one for the taxpayer

[George+]

I think you and a few buddies missed the part where the
government of B.C. had to rescind Bill 29 that destroyed
HEU negotiated contracts and actually renegotiate in a meaningful way
with the Health workers.

That is also what the RCMP ruling is all about...meaningful negotiations
with an agreement, probably best done with a union.

But go ahead, repeat the same B.S. again and again, even if it is wrong.
Cherry pick to your heats content. It is the affect that matters.

The govt. may find themselves in very deep financial problems shortly.
They might be wise to try to renegotiate now.
I will not hold my breath.

[The Green Barbarian]

How does this apply to the teachers? All it says is they're current (previous) process was not considered collective bargaining and they can choose to bargain collectively in a different process.

(Health workers mentioned in previous post).

It doesn't apply to the BCTF. But that's not important. George and KGT are just parroting the nonsense they received in their email box this morning from the BCTF spin-doctoring team. Iker and his gang of thugs know that the only thing standing in their way of wasting millions more dollars on this nonsense is some of the members of the BCTF to say "Hey you know what, stop with the idiotic court challenges. Enough is enough." They can't have that, and so they have to wave the RCMP and the HEU in the faces of the poor stooges footing the bill for these court challenges, and give them false hope.

They can always count on the parrots to keep squawking their talking points. Always. These parrots are total brain-washed automatons. Perfect union members.

[LordEd]

I think you and a few buddies missed the part where the
government of B.C. had to rescind Bill 29 that destroyed
HEU negotiated contracts and actually renegotiate in a meaningful way
with the Health workers.

Here it is: http://www.bclaws.ca/civix/document/id/ ... g/02002_01

They had to rescind sections 6(2), 6(4), and 9.

http://www.heu.org/sites/default/files/ ... report.pdf

Section 6(2) eliminated any contracting-out protections from health care collective agreements – past and future –
affecting non-clinical services.

Section 6(4) eliminated any provisions that required consultation before contracting out non-clinical services.

Section 9 restricted layoff and bumping language.

These are not parallel to class size/composition, which is as the appeals court said "involve not only working conditions, but matters of education policy.

[George+]

Now you are getting close to the crux of the matter.

Obviously, the govt. had to not only rescind , but also ReBARGAIN the items noted.

Same should happen with tne teachers because....

What the hell does class size and composition, that has been bargained for decades, have to
do with govt. Education POLICY?. Education policy is a broad framework.
Bargaining is specific and must occur under the constitution and be meaningful.

And incidentally, class size and composition were bargained long before the NDP gained power.
Can you say Socreds?

[LordEd]

https://www.leg.bc.ca/36th3rd/3rd_read/gov39-3.htm

(b) the Memorandum of Agreement K-3 Primary Class Size signed on behalf of the government and the BCTF and appended to the Agreement in Committee,

In 1998, it was legislated in.

The choice between one more teacher or one more nurse is a question of policy.

[flamingfingers]

Interesting arguments from Justice Ian Donald:

Appeal court gives government a ‘free hand’ in labour negotiations

Dissenting judge warns that this makes a mockery of collective bargaining

By Daphne Bramham, Vancouver Sun columnist April 30, 2015

If the courts can’t examine the reasonableness of a government’s position, then how will its power be held in check? That’s the challenging question raised in the dissent to the Court of Appeal’s majority decision on the case involving the B.C. government and the teachers.

In a 4-1 decision released Thursday, the court ruled that the government had bargained in good faith with the teachers and had not breached the union’s constitutional right to collective bargaining.

In his 38-page objection, Justice Ian Donald challenged the assertion in the majority decision that in determining whether a government is acting in good faith, it is “inappropriate ... for a court or tribunal to investigate the factual basis and internal logic of an employer’s substantive bargaining proposals.”

If that’s the case, Donald wrote that governments would then have the power to “declare all further compromise in any context to be untenable, pass whatever it wants and spend all ‘consultation periods’ repeatedly saying, ‘Sorry this is as far as we can go.’ This would make a mockery of the concept of collective bargaining.”

He noted — as did the majority decision — that there is a world of difference between public- and private-sector employers and not only because the public-sector employers are elected to represent all of society’s stakeholders.

Governments can pass legislation ordering employees back to work and impose contracts — “a huge power imbalance that fundamentally alters the calculus of how negotiations unfold.” Because of that, the former labour lawyer and arbitrator said it is of “great concern” that any unilateral actions by a government can be “cured” in the constitutional sense through consultation.

In fact, that’s precisely why Donald says courts must be able to investigate all aspects of whether those consultations were done in good faith, including the “reasonableness” of the government’s position.

“In a case like this, we are not dealing with rights and freedoms in the abstract,” he wrote. “Rather, a case like this deals entirely with discrete actions of government and the relationship between actual, identifiable and knowable parties.”

But the majority — Chief Justice Robert Bauman and justices David Harris, Mary Newbury and Mary Saunders — rejected the idea that the reasonableness was important in determining good faith.

A central question for the majority opinion was whether a government’s policy objectives are subordinate to labour rights.
“We accept that these subjects (class size and composition) affect teachers’ working conditions, but they engage more than just working conditions; they directly engage education policy,” Chief Justice Bauman and Justice Harris wrote for the majority.

Donald responded: “Granting broad protections to Charter rights is not incompatible with the government’s obligations to compose and pursue policy goals.”

Because the majority rejected the test of reasonableness, it also rejected key findings of fact made by the trial judge.

Donald said that too was a mistake, noting that the Supreme Court of Canada has repeatedly emphasized the importance of deferring to the trial judge in “the determinations of fact or questions of mixed fact and law.”

He also argued that the function of the appeal judges is “not to substitute the findings and inferences made by a judge who has had the full benefit of the trial process with an appeal division’s own opinions of the facts, unless the trial judge has made such palpable and overriding errors of fact that the conclusion cannot stand ... I disagree that the trial judge made any palpable and overriding errors of fact.”

Donald says that she had “particular knowledge of the relationship between the parties” and “the benefit of 29 days of evidence and submissions” over a period of three years.

Given Donald’s dissent and his suggestion that the government now has a free hand to do whatever it wants, it’s not surprising that the B.C. Teachers Federation plans to seek leave to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada.

The Supreme Court has already heard a similar case involving B.C. health workers. That case also had its genesis in the 2002 austerity package that included the legislation that stripped the BCTF of its right to bargain working conditions. And, in that case, the Supreme Court sided with the health workers against the government.

It will be up to the country’s highest court to decide whether the case is of sufficient national interest to merit being heard.
But, given Donald’s dire warnings, it’s hard to imagine that it isn’t.

[email protected]

[The Green Barbarian]

I am thinking both Justice Donald and Justice Griffin need to get off the bench, and go grab a cosy union sinecure "advising" labour lawyers and big unions. They don't seem qualified to be making decisions of this magnitude and are instead exposing a very large issue with our justice system - both seem unable to separate their personal views from the actual law, and because of that, especially in Griffin's case, this has cost taxpayers millions upon millions of dollars.

This is the slightly smaller story here, but not much smaller. The big one is the BCTF getting spanked, and rightly so. The other elephant in the room is the exposure of the huge problems with our justices. If Griffin had been doing her job, this all would have been quashed years ago, and perhaps we could have seen a few years of reconciliation and collaboration, instead of the continued fighting and stupidity we've seen instead. Justice Griffin - you owe everyone in BC a giant apology.

[George+]

But you actually do not have a clue about collective bargaining
and how to make it work.

Neither does your strike provoking buddy, Christy.

[George+]

And if you look at Bill 29 the CSC forced the govt. to
rescind sections and hire more staff. because....
they had violated collective agreements...

Nothing to do with Policy which are just broad general statements.

Would you say their POLICY was to intentionally do that?

Justice Griffin did, and collective bargaining needs to be restored again as a consequence.

[The Green Barbarian]

But you actually do not have a clue about collective bargaining
.

And you don't have a clue, about pretty much anything.

[totoramona]

What the hell does class size and composition, that has been bargained for decades, have to
do with govt. Education POLICY?.

The article by Inclusion BC explained this, George+.
Class size and composition has everything to do with education policy.

Maybe it makes more sense in one classroom to have 33 kids taught by one teacher and three Education Assistants, but if this decision was left up to the BCTF, they would ONLY look at the class size and insist on hiring another teacher instead.

The BCTF should be truthful about the fact that they represent TEACHERS, not KIDS.

Inclusion BC represents kids.

[George+]

Your example just does not make any sense.

[totoramona]

Your example just does not make any sense.

With a hard cap on class size, there can't be more children in the class than the contract states, even if there are more Education Assistants in the room. Addressing class size and composition involves more than just a teacher to child ratio. There may be cases where it makes sense to add more EA's to a school rather than teachers. Class size and composition should be determined by the needs of the children, not the teachers' BCTF contract.

That is why it makes sense that the recent ruling determined that class size and composition is a matter of education policy, not just contract bargaining.

[George+]

That would be fine if you could prove the government's current uncapped,
and increased class size was working. It is not... and has made it worse for both
teachers and students, and very frustrating to parents.

Just dumping kids in will nilly, wherever is NOT fair to the student at all.

WORSE...it has only made public school classroom situations worse.

Inclusion does not mean making things worse.

[Urbane]

That would be fine if you could prove the government's current uncapped,
and increased class size was working. It is not... and has made it worse for both
teachers and students, and very frustrating to parents.

Just dumping kids in will nilly, wherever is NOT fair to the student at all.

WORSE...it has only made public school classroom situations worse.

Inclusion does not mean making things worse.

Many on here who don't want to see an inflexible, inefficient system have also said that they'd like to see more support. Count me in. However, we need to spend wisely and allocate the resources where they are needed most. If there are places where school officials are "dumping kids in will nilly" ?? then shame on them. If there is no reason or thought to how resources are being allocated that's shameful. Is it happening though and if so to what extent is it happening? Or is this charge just another case of educator bashing? Resources will always be limited and not limitless. That's just the way it is. So let's be careful about bashing those who are making difficult decisions.