Teacher bargaining

[Urbane]

Nah, petulant is the right word.

Susan Lambert certainly comes across as petulant. She's always 'outraged" at the "draconian" measures of the government that's supposedly turning teachers into "slaves." Hypocritical is another apt word. Those who disrupt the education of students with self-serving job action such as withholding help to students and then complain that students aren't receiving the services that they need are most definitely hypocritical.

[George+]

Well, would you expect services to be disrupted
When a strike/work to rule is in effect?

To label all teachers as not caring about students
During this time, is just nonsense, and
Petulant, too!

[Urbane]

Well, would you expect services to be disrupted
When a strike/work to rule is in effect?

To label all teachers as not caring about students
During this time, is just nonsense, and
Petulant, too!

Of course services to students will be disrupted when a strike/work to rule is in effect. That's the point George. It's bad for students. You're okay with students being hurt if it happens as part of the strategy to further the ends of the BCTF but I'm not. For you the end justifies the means, eh George? And let's be clear that students are hurt when teachers break their previously made commitments to coach teams, supervise field trips, participate in graduation ceremonies, or when teachers withhold extra help out of regular classroom hours. These actions are most definitely not good for students. Period.

Who said that "all teachers are not caring about students" George? Tell us who said that and provide the quote. It certainly wasn't me. In fact I specifically pointed out that many teachers disobeyed their union and did in fact help students out of regular classroom hours. Many went ahead and coached teams, took students on trips, participated in concerts, and attended graduation ceremonies and good for them. Anyway, I know it's difficult to defend a union that counsels its members to withhold services from students but don't make things up George. I certainly haven't smeared teachers on here - quite the contrary. You're the one who's done the smearing with what you've said about school-based administrators.

[logicalview]

To label all teachers as not caring about students
During this time, is just nonsense, and
Petulant, too!

So you are not only dense, but a liar as well. What else do you expect from a union stooge who advocates for a union whose main strategy is to exploit children. George the dense union dinosaur.

[sooperphreek]

is the union bashing all you guys got? really? you are like a record player that keeps scratching at the end of the record over and over all nite. class size is a huge issue because all kinds of schools are being shut down. which could possibly mean that you will have too many kids in too few of classrooms. is that wise? what if there was a fire and the teacher couldnt possibly control that many kids? and one or many die in a fire? will all this so called control on the employers part be worth a lick then? and what about education standards? we basically force kids through their education and find creative ways to pass them. and we wonder why we are so far behind china and India in the modern reality? is scary. we live in a time where profit is a cause for people when they dont deserve it. and it is squandered. i think of the security issues at the 2012 olympics. the company signed a contract and had a budget. then got cold feet when they were locked in and they were not gonna make their cushion. then they expected the government to come in and foot the bill for the oversights. free market today is too free in my opinion. and thats how the government is trying to run things. but it wont work.

[Urbane]

You and George may be okay with the BCTF's strategy to use kids as pawns but I think it's unprofessional, counterproductive, and not good for students. Those of us who disagree with that strategy are standing up for students even though you call it union bashing. As to some of your other points like the teacher not being able to get students out in the event of fire I think you need to take that up with local fire authorities if you're aware of any classrooms that don't meet the provincial standards. As to another type of standards, educational standards, BC has actually been doing well in comparison to other jurisdictions but don't let the facts get in your way. You've bought into the BCTF rhetoric about how terrible things are in our education system and about how schools are being closed but no schools opened or renovated. It's propaganda, of course, but believe it if you like. I think our schools are functioning pretty well for the most part and teachers, by and large, are working hard and doing a good job.

[sooperphreek]

your facts are from the fraser institute and in the future may be changed to a better way of figuring out those stats.

[Urbane]

A couple of weeks ago Margaret Wente penned this column and although it was with Ontario teachers in mind it certainly applies to BC teachers as well as teachers elsewhere:

MARGARET WENTE
Teachers’ unions are obsolete

The Globe and Mail
Published Saturday, Jan. 12 2013

School’s out. No, it’s in. Check your local news for the latest.

In Ontario, the chaos in the schools has descended into farce. The elementary-school union ordered the teachers out of class on Friday to protest legislation that sent them back to work. Then a labour board ruling forced them back in. Parents are fed up, and everyone is mad. Most people blame the unions.

McGuinty says teachers in ‘their heart of hearts’ want to bring back extracurriculars
‘Hope’ is only option left in settling Ontario school dispute, Broten says
Ontario public servants agree to two-year wage freeze in contract
“I hope my union leadership is happy now,” one teacher told me in an e-mail. “We’ve made ourselves look ridiculous. Is there anyone we have failed to alienate?”

Welcome to the next decade. Wherever you live in Canada, whatever party your provincial government happens to belong to, strife in the schools is about to become a way of life. The public-sector pie is shrinking, and everybody on the public payroll will have to take a hit. That’s why Ontario’s education-friendly government cracked down on the teachers. If they’re not reined in, everybody else will fight back, too. More than 1.1-million people in Ontario – civil servants, social workers, nurses, teachers, police, garbage collectors – are on the public payroll; their collective paycheque amounts to around $58-billion a year.

The case for public-sector unions is arguable at the best of times. Public employees are supposed to behave in the public interest. But the more entrenched and powerful their unions become, the more money they are able to extract in the form of raises, bankable sick days, job security, generous pensions, rigid work rules, and the like. The unions’ job is to act in the interest of their members, which is inevitably contrary to the broader interests of the public. Politicians are happy to comply because the public purse is bottomless (until it’s not). Politicians are supposed to bargain on behalf of all the citizens. But the citizens don’t have unions.

Teachers regard themselves, rightly, as professionals. But the standards and practices that govern most professionals don’t apply to them. Their official work hours are precisely regulated. They have no meaningful performance reviews. They don’t get merit pay. And virtually nobody gets fired for poor teaching. In other words, no one gets rewarded for outstanding work or penalized for awful work.

God help us if extracurricular activities become part of their union contracts, because then the coaching, the yearbook, the prom, the chess club, and all those other unquantifiable but crucial interactions with the kids will become just as regulated (and subject to union negotiation) as classroom time.

Teachers’ unions are obsolete for other reasons, too. If children were widgets, and schools were the assembly line through which they pass from kindergarten through Grade 12, the union model might make sense. But kids aren’t widgets and teachers aren’t factory workers. Every kid is different, and the process of learning is nuanced and complex. The old industrial model of education, which was explicitly designed to produce a steady flow of reliable workers for the industrial age, is completely unsuited to the world we live in now.

Almost every aspect of our lives has been transformed since grandma went to school. Yet the education industry is remarkably impervious to change. Kids still go to school at fixed times and sit through a series of fixed class periods where information is chopped up into “subjects.” As Salman Khan, the brilliant founder of the Khan Academy, observes, instructional practice has barely changed since the late 1800s. There are too many interests invested in the way things are. “Any effort at change is smothered under the vast weight of educational orthodoxy,” he writes in his new book, The One World Schoolhouse. The main aspects of the system are “inertia and resistance to new and threatening ideas.”

One example of a new and threatening idea is that the standard classroom model – what Mr. Khan calls the one-pace-fits-all lecture – is a highly inefficient way to teach and learn. Teachers try to work around this, but they can’t do much about it. They’re pretty much forced to teach to the middle of the pack, which means slow and fast kids are shortchanged. The system is hardest on the slower kids, who are passed along the line before they master basic concepts. This explains why so many kids graduate from high school without the functional ability to read, write or do basic mathematics.

The Khan Academy was born when Mr. Khan (who was educated at MIT and Harvard) began posting short instructional videos on YouTube. Students can watch them at their own time and pace until they get the concept, and they can also take targeted self-assessment tests. His big idea is to flip the classroom model, so that independent learning replaces in-class lectures, and class time is used for creative work, problem-solving and personal coaching from the teacher. The videos are now used around the world, and even in a few schools.

Other fields have been revolutionized by new technology and new ideas, which have driven down costs, unleashed creativity, and dramatically improved results. Why can’t education do the same? Why can’t teachers be liberated to be far more effective than they are? The answer is obvious. Public education is a monopoly, which means it doesn’t have to change. The dead weight of bureaucracy and tradition repel innovation. The teachers’ unions aren’t entirely to blame for this, of course – they’re just part of a bigger problem. Their entire reason for being is to preserve the status quo. That’s why you can expect more strife at the schools – and hardly any talk at all about better ways to educate your kids.

[George+]

I like the last paragraph.

Where will the bucks come from?

[Urbane]

Speaking about bucks . . . these BCTF staffers have lots of them:

2010-2013 Collective Agreement between BCTF Executive Committee and CEP Local 464
Appendix A – Salary Placement and Seniority of Employees – at December 31, 2009 through to 2013

Hinds, N.M. – Position – Assistant Director $ 110,583. Aggregate Service 30/05/16 (YY/MM/DD)
Kuehn, L. – Director 110,583 + DA 23/05/29
Chapman, A. – Assistant Director 110,583 19/09/22
McLaren, Rob – Director 110,583 + DA 17/02/00
Ross, M. – Assistant Director 110,583 13/07/00
Briard, Don – Assistant Director 110,583 11/11/06
McLaughlin, P. – Assistant Director 110,583 10/10/25
Lambert, A. – Director 110,583 +DA 09/06/00
Taylor, G. – Assistant Director 110,583 09/02/00
Brown, G. – Assistant Director 110,583 08/08/29
McCue, P. – Assistant Director 110,583 06/05/17
Denyer, D. – Assistant Director 110,583 05/06/00
Hoover, R. – Assistant Director 110,583 + DA 05/06/00
Turner, J. – Assistant Director 110,583 05/06/00
Peters, G. – Director 110,583 + DA 04/06/25
Tirk, C. – Assistant Director 104,200 02/11/14
Chelali, M. – Assistant Director 104,200 02/04/11
Kimmis, M. – Assistant Director 104,200 02/01/00
Ellis, E, - Assistant Director 98,308 01/11/00
Popp, G. – Assistant Director 98,308 01/11/00
Arcari, C. – Assistant Director 98,308 01/06/00
Chamberlain, J. – Assistant Director 98,308 01/06/00
Dumont, M. – Assistant Director 98,308 01/06/00
Kendrick, R. – Assistant Director 98,308 01/06/00
Merrifield, J. – Assistant Director 98,308 01/06/00
Overgaard, R. – Assistant Director 98,308 01/06/00
Richardson, K. – Assistant Director 98,308 01/06/00
Shields, K. – Assistant Director 98,308 01/06/00
Sims, J. – Director 98,308 + DA 01/06/00
Taylor, R. – Assistant Director 98,308 01/06/00
Trask, R. – Assistant Director 98,308 01/06/00
Wadge, J. – Assistant Director 98,308 01/06/00
Allevato, C. – Assistant Director 98,308 01/02/26
Langenmaier, K. – Assistant Director 92,696 01/00/00 ?
Halme, D. – Assistant Director 92,696 01/00/00
Turner, P. – Assistant Director 92,696 00/01/00
Notes: DA signifies that the employee is entitled to a director’s allowance, pursuant to clause 15,3. Same Aggregate Service in Alphabetic Order. No tiebreakers have been determined.
15.3 Employees classified as a director shall receive a responsibility allowance of 7.0% of Step 4 (=$ 110,583)
15.4 Special Allowance – the employer shall pay each employee a monthly special allowance equivalent to 2.5% of the monthly salary of Step 4 (=$110,583).

Who is CEP Local 464 you ask? http://www.cep464.ca
Info found at http://www.lrb.bc.ca/WVB37.pdf

[logicalview]

Wow that's a lot of overpaid bozos! Now watch the union sheep George rush to defend them...

[Urbane]

This woman has some ideas worth considering:

The Teachers Union in BC – who is victimizing whom?
Carol Gibson April 30, 2012

BC teachers deserve the ability to opt out of the BCTF

In summer of 2011 a colleague asked when I thought the “limited strike” would end. My response was pragmatic and pessimistic. I indicated that I expected the “strike” to drag on through the year, with a break during summer of 2012 and full scale escalation beginning in September 2012 closer to the time of the provincial election. I further anticipated that the BCTF leadership would fail to bargain effectively as it has consistently done in the past, and that teachers would again be legislated back to work.

Why would I expect this? Primarily because the leadership of the BCTF has consistently failed to demonstrate that it can be an effective union or an effective union of professionals. The individuals who are most disadvantaged by this failure are the individual teachers who each school day interact with students in classrooms.

I am not an apologist for government and I am not anti-union. However, were I teacher and a member of the BCTF, I would be concerned about the leadership of the union, its political agendas and its willingness to cast its members in the role of “victim”.

BCTF rhetoric perpetuates a myth that government, regardless of political party, is intent on victimizing teachers, does not respect what they do or respect them as individuals. To demonstrate respect for teachers, government merely must accede to all union demands irrespective of cost to the taxpayers or necessary services in other sectors, such as health, that would have to be reduced or eliminated.

BCTF leadership also perpetuates a myth that what the BCTF seeks at the bargaining table is “for the students”. A brief glance at the initial proposals the BCTF brought to the table would suggest otherwise. Not one would have had a direct and positive effect on the learning environment for students in classrooms.

These have been consistent BCTF strategies through successive rounds of bargaining. If the leadership can convince BCTF members that government is deliberately victimizing them collectively and individually, then the union leadership has latitude to use any and all means to protect the members from “bullying by government”. While focused on being bullied by government only a few members will ask: what about BCTF bullying? What about a union that claims to be democratic, but seeks to supplant government to dominate and to control public education? What about a union that will exercise its influence to silence dissenting views or limit the careers of teachers who express dissenting views?

Perhaps the time has come to question whether there are alternate ways to organize. The current BCTF union structure as a post entry closed shop is dysfunctional and costly to the very society it claims to serve.

Currently, the only checks and balances in the relationship between government representing the electorate and the BCTF representing its members are legal. The BCTF has become adept at using legal means to stall, to challenge and to threaten individuals who speak out in opposition to the BCTF leadership.

The law is a blunt instrument in this relationship and legal decisions are routinely misinterpreted by the BCTF in public releases crafted to ensure that teachers continue to believe that they are being victimized. To be fair, the BCTF has occasionally used legal means to positive ends, but whether the gains have been worth the cost to the members is open to question.

Perhaps if the members had the option either not to join the union or to pay only for those services from which they benefit monetarily, such as the cost of negotiations, there would be greater incentives for the BCTF to bargain effectively rather than attempting to use the bargaining process as a means to influence political outcomes in provincial or local elections.

There are alternate examples in the USA and in the EU. Rather than closed shops, there are agency shops in which non-union members pay fees, but specifically for the cost of negotiating a contract. Or, there are open shops in which union membership is not required. These are more common in the EU and recognize the individual’s right not to belong to a union.

BC desperately needs at least a discussion about possible options. What currently exists does not serve the members or the public. It seems primarily to serve the leadership of the BCTF.

- post by Carol Gibson
http://citycaucus.com/2012/04/the-teach ... zing-whom/

[logicalview]

that is one smart lady. Funny how she is basically saying what a lot of others on these forums have been saying - the BCTF is part of an out-dated model that only serves to exploit children and victimize parents. It doesn't serve the interests of students, taxpayers or children, and only serves the interests of its own leadership. The only people who continue to support this horrible entity are dinosaurs and brain-washed union leftists who refuse to see the writing on the wall. Its time for the BCTF to be decertified, once and for all.

[LoneWolf_53]

Now let's see how long it takes the usual suspects to claim the source as somehow uncredible....5....4.....3.....2............






ETA: Some interesting stuff in this article as well, plus it's worth reading the comments below it...... http://citycaucus.com/2012/04/teaching- ... ade-union/

One bit from that piece....

What is the history related to teaching in BC? In 1987 government enacted the Teaching Profession Act. It granted to teachers the right to self-regulate through the BC College of Teachers. Teachers were given a gift. They were recognized as a profession. They were granted the rights and obligations of other mature self-regulating professions.

The BCTF responded forcefully and negatively to this gift. It was seen as a threat to the BCTF ability to command and to control teaching and education within BC. Ken Novakowski in the September 2010 issue of Teacher summed up the BCTF response succinctly: “After debating the merits of boycotting the college or participating in the college to limit its scope of activity (emphasis added) the BCTF decided on the latter.”

[kibbs]

How can you get rid of this bloated sick dinosaur.They are more powerful than the government now.It would take huge social upheaval.We will ending up having to changing how we educate around the system to force change to it.Private schools and home school coops will have to grow.The system is top heavy and the workings to complicated and high maintenance.It would be nice if we could just nuke it.