Two views below: which is correct? One? Both? Neither? ??????????????? The state gives a union the right to strike. The state can void the right to strike. A right to strike is the only occasion when a state gives away its prerogative of ultimate force; to allow violence within its borders. When a state/province allows a union to rule, the state is bankrupt, morally and legally. The state is dead. Anarchy shall follow. >>>>>

The right to strike is entrenched in the Canadian constitution. It is also the only serious means by which employees can influence contract negotiations with an otherwise more powerful employer. Whether or not you agree with a group of workers’ demands, you have to allow them the right to fight for them, in the same way that Voltaire is said to have allowed his opponent the right to free speech in a democratic society. “Back to work legislation” removes these rights.

– Anthony Waldron
Communications Director, CUPE 2278 >>>>>
http://www.gss.ubc.ca/services/graduate/januarypage4.html

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

babble: "Illegal"strike, essential service, and the law
I am new here, just wondering if Canada has a constitution? ... Unfortunately,
the right to strike is not protected in the Constitution. ...
www.rabble.ca/babble/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic&f=7&t=001329 - 49k - 14 Oct 2005 -

You think this is bad just wait for the Whistler Olympics. BC has no choice but to start playing hardball with all unions NOW ... I agree ... Fire all the teachers some will realize they can't do anything else, some never did support this strike, and some, sadly, will take it out on their students.

Back in the early 80's the teachers in Calgary went on strike in May ... it lasted through to mid September. Unfortunately for me that was the transition year from grade 9 to 10 and we had one teacher who just for kicks failed 58 out of 60 Math 10 students. This deprived all of those kids their full Rutherford scholarships since they didn't acheive full honors in all 3 grades of high school, plus it screwed the scheduling of the school the next year because we all had to redo grade 10 math in Grade 11. He should have been fired - but teachers no matter how bitter and incompetent get tenure - we got screwed.

I hope the parents of kids with these teachers are paying attention. I don't have sympathy for any union in Canada ... sweatshops in China yes, not here ever.

Someone ought to ask Paul Martin what he thinks of the teachers illegal actions and their subsequent losses in the courts.

If, according to Mr. Martin, it's bad when the Americans do it(ignore agreed upon negotiating/settlement procedures), then he should stand up and criticize the teachers and their union for actions that are similar to that which he criticizes the Americans for.

Either he condemns the teachers actions (and alientates a few voters in the process), or he sidesteps the question and looks like a hypocrite.

The rights that are being violated here are not the right to strike, or the right to an education. Those are non-rights, because the first one is really about being given a legal blessing to harrass and intimidate one's employer and the employer's customers, and the second is about forcefully taking money from one group of people in order to support another group of people. In both cases, force is used in what is allegedly a peaceful society, in order for a smaller group to take advantage of a larger group.

The best possible outcome would be for the public schools to be abolished. But don't worry! No one is going to listen to little ol' me. Instead, the worst possible outcome will occur, which is that the teachers will be sent back to school, and they will become even more bitter, unhappy and unproductive than they were before. The schools will suck even worse, and more parents will lower themselves into poverty in order to send their kids to private schools. To make the public schools "more competitive" the teachers, bureaucrats and politicians will demand that even more money be poured in. Taxes will be raised even higher, and public school teachers' salaries will go up and up. Private schools will have to raise their teachers' salaries to compete, and will raise their tuition even more. The taxpayers, and the supporters of private schools, will have less money in their pockets to spend and invest the community, and poverty and unemployment will grow. Fascist spectacles will be staged, such as Olympic Games and World Fairs, in order to provide short-term economic relief, and put a little lipstick on the crumbling infrastructure. The currency will be vastly inflated to provide more fake economic stimulus to the dysfunctional economy. I don't want to go on and on and bore all you people, but it should be pretty clear how this will all end ... if you continue to mistake wrongs for rights.

Or maybe some big hulking unhinged student, and their pissed-off parent comes to school one day and beats the living crap out of a teacher for sabotaging the kids future. When charged with assault and battery, they plead; the law is unjust and they should not be compelled to abide by laws that are obviously meant for other people.

The Cockeyed Optimist.

I think the judge will of course let them off with a warning.

When I was a kid I would have given up eating for a week if the teachers would have gone on strike. I would not have had to go to a smelly old daycare though, my parents lived at home and so did our dog and our ponies! Did my teachers go on strike? NEVER, not once. We had a blizzard one year that lasted three days, the whole school was storm stayed at a neighbours place; teacher too (I went to a country school) she held regular classes for us every single day in that cramped living room.
That teacher has my admiration and respect to this day. I wonder if the lawbreaker, greedy, lazy outfit on the picket lines will have any positive lasting effect on their students forty years from now? They do not deserve respect, without respect trying to teach is pointless - fire them all Mr. Campbell and hire a new batch. Nothing could be worse for kids than to be forced to obay known criminals.

"When I was a kid I would have given up eating for a week if the teachers would have gone on strike."

Quite right, too. And if they had done so, and even stayed out for the whole year, it is unlikely that you would be worse off today and quite possible that you and your peers would actually be better educated. Rather than getting as worked up as some folks have about forcing teachers and students back to the classroom, we should perhaps take this illegal strike as a golden opportunity to rethink our whole approach to education. O felix culpa!

..."this is no longer is an issue about money or class size"...

Teachers will get my attention when it reaches this point:

http://tinyurl.com/98nvn

Furthering the concept of Right & Wrong in S. Korea:

..."I wish we could tell exactly how much trouble we are in," a 30-year-old Canadian teacher said in a phone interview from Kwangju, Korea, on Friday. "The idea of me being locked up and handcuffed and fed grog is ridiculous. They say what we're doing is criminal, but it doesn't feel that way." The woman, who is from B.C., said she arrived on a spousal visa, but was enticed into teaching English illegally to supplement her husband's income...

http://tinyurl.com/9984w

I have enjoyed reading this blog and comments now for many months but have never felt compelled to respond. However, I feel I must on this issue.

I am a conservative and most of my live I've been anti-union. I am also a public school teacher in BC. I am also the step-parent of a special needs child. My husband, her mother, step-father and I have just pulled her out of public school because she isn't getting the help or protection within the regular class. She is getting bullied by the other kids, she is not getting any help because she doesn't qualify for an aide. The school has always managed to get her some special ed assistant time but in the past two years, it has gotten progressively worse. Why?? Because the government doesn't care about kids that are disadvantaged and is not funding them properly. Whether you agree with integration of special needs students within the regular classroom or not, it's the way our system works and it should be funded properly. Our BC government says it funds it properly, but I KNOW FOR A FACT, it doesn't.

Now, we're lucky. We have a situation where four parents can contribute for private school. Believe me, I don't make a fortune (I know many people would disagree with that statement) but we have no choice. But what about parents who can't afford it? They, and their kids are stuck within a system that is chronically underfunded, with teachers that are stretched to the limit.

My story is unique, but not uncommon. Unless you are actually working in the system, you honestly don't know the real issues here. There are MANY conservative, anti-union school teachers OUT ON THE LINE because this is the only thing left to do. And I am conservative. Hell must be freezing over.

Ingrid

Another Four Word Solution re Dingwall/AdScamgum Martin:

Three Strikes And Out. >>>>

The rise and fall of David Dingwall
Part 1: Charting the politician’s climb to power
By STEPHEN MAHER Ottawa Bureau

Editor’s note: This is the first of a two-part series about the career of David Dingwall. Part 2 will will appear on Monday.

OTTAWA — This can’t be the way David Dingwall wanted to finish his career.

It’s the afternoon of Thursday, Sept. 29.

Papers across Canada are full of stories about the travel and hospitality expenses of Mr. Dingwall, master of the Royal Canadian Mint: tens of thousands of dollars spent on gourmet meals, luxurious travel, and the kind of personal expenses that most people pay themselves: golf fees, car, home Internet link-up, newspapers, water, a $1.29 pack of gum.

Mr. Dingwall — the object of scorn in two languages, coast to coast, in print, on the radio, TV and online — issues a statement at noon, announcing he is stepping down as mint boss.

He gives one parting interview — to CTV’s Rosemary Thompson — in a coin shop at the mint’s Ottawa headquarters.

He starts out smiling, pleasant, mild, animated. He is wearing rimless glasses, a black suit and a subtle gold tie.

“Is this your decision or were you forced out?” asks Ms. Thompson.

“No. It’s my decision. I spoke with the prime minister earlier this morning. He was very gracious, very supportive. But like he, and I, we know what’s at stake here. It’s a very different environment than what we’re used to,” he says, with a rueful giggle. >>>>
http://www.thechronicleherald.ca/Front/459248.html

... it should be funded properly. Our BC government says it funds it properly, but I KNOW FOR A FACT, it doesn't.

The trouble is, no matter how much funding the government puts in any program, it's never enough. Because politicians and bureaucrats don't care about the results, they only care about getting the money. There is more than enough money in "the system" to pay for everybody's education, even special education, but the money is wasted and stolen. Swing by your local provincial education ministry building, then your local school board HQ, the next time you're driving around town; and definitely check out the Education Ministry offices in the provincial capital. Count how many floors of offices there are, and estimate how many people work there. Find the Education Ministry and School Board budget figures on the 'net, and look up the job postings to see how much money these parasites are pulling down. Check out the benefits too, especially the pensions. Try to find out when was the last time an education bureaucrat was fired for wasting or stealing money, or slipping a juicy contract to a friend or family member, or for implementing a useless and counterproductive "improvement" to the curriculum.

The poorest people don't need "more funding" in the education system. They need lower taxes just like everyone else. Even if they never pay a dime in income tax. Ever wonder where all those rich people's money would go, if they'd pay less tax? They would spend it on hiring more people to work for them - gardeners, painters, private tutors, auto mechanics, carpenters, chauffeurs - you name it. And they would give their money to charitable works. And if a rich person was to give a million dollars to fund a special-needs program at a private school near where he lives, you can be goddamned sure that: the money isn't going to be wasted and stolen by bureaucrats and contractors; that any surly or ineffective teachers will be weeded out; and there won't be any union parasites explaining how they're taking teachers off the job to "improve" the school.

It’s a very different environment than what we’re used to,” he says, with a rueful giggle.

Wow. That's almost as good as Gagliano's:

"Nobody's proven that I did anything wrong yet"

Rosemary - I was FORTUNATE to have a teacher who had so much respect for her students that she did not use a blizzard as an excuse to take a few days off- she was an excellent teacher and her students were a priority. The forementioned teacher had 14 students, grades one to twelve, nine miles to drive to school and NO aids. We wrote Sask. department exams at the end of every year. My brothers and myself passed with A's and B's every year.
Ingrid; the whine is loud - more money and 'special treatment' for 'special' students. I guess all kids are 'special' according to their parents. Your child is a victim of 'daycare mentality kids'. Children learn no compassion at daycare and parents are too busy pleasing their own offspring (in payment for abandoning them at daycare instead of taking care of them, themselves) to take their kids to task when cruelity and mean behavior is rearing it's ugly head. Kids are not naturally nice!! It all starts at home - if no one is home then kids treat the disabled with the instints of animals - animals abandon the weak to die or they kill them directly. "Servival of the fittest". I hope you are not one of the supporters of Liberano sponsered babysitting centres.

Maybe someone can just run them over with a couple cars. That is how this type of situation is handled by corporations.
For all the anti-union ones, why is that so many unions are resorting to job action ? This as been the summer of discontent.
The reason,as I see it, is that employees have been told to buckle down for the past 20 years. We need to hold the line for 20 years. If you were being told this by your employer and cooperated for that long. Then they come at you again for more restrait,even though the economy is booming. What would you do ?

Sure, "employees have been told to buckle down for the last twenty years." Let's see, two weeks off at Christmas, nine days off at Easter, two months off in the summer...yes, the "corporation" (i.e. the taxpayers) have been so merciless towards the teachers. And then there's the coal dust, and being forced to buy from the company store...

The teachers union has been campaining against the liberals since they were in opposition. I am not a liberal supporter, any one stupid enough to put liberal with their name is too stupid to get my vote. This strike cannot be about class size, 600K students devided by 46K teachers = 13 students per class, so it must be about money. Who else makes 65K pluss benefits and gets 3 months hollidays? Its time the government got some back-bone and told the teachers either get to work or never teach in BC again.

I have come to the realization that public education as we know it, both in Canada and in the U.S - is a failure. This is all due to the Teacher's unions. No amount of money, no amount of declining standards, no amount of appeasement will fix this. Sadly, I think the only solution is to abolish public education, and have some voucher system or what not.

So I was a high school student in Toronto during the Harris years. Been there, done that, like you have no idea.

That teaching is not an essential service is beyond me, this is ridiculous. That a small amount of people can yield this much power is absolutely insane.

I'd love to see Campbell or whoever the Minister of Education out there is fire them. I know it's not feasible, but it would just make me deliriously happy.

home school or private school your kids!

private schools get better teachers and pay them less, while getting more committment out of them. why? easy, they have a strict disciplinary code, teaching standards, and the school and usually the parents will back them up on homework, discipline, etc.

if you don't like your job, quit. thats what those of us in the private sector do. go to a competitor (private schools), set up a new business (your own little school... out of your own house with a few neighbourhood kids, can replace your salary equivalent from public system fairly easily), or get into something else. don't go on strike, especially don't breach contracts or court orders.

Spending more $ = wasting more $
Public Education is far too bureaucratic. Extra funding would disappear into a black hole.
The real problem our schools face is a social problem. A good teacher could easily teach 40 well-behaved, polite and attentive children. The problem in the typical public school class is there are 20-25 children who are prepared to be well-behaved and attentive and 5-10 who are not. What's that expression about "one bad apple?"
Increasingly, we live in a society that is socially decaying and corrupt. Humanist liberals have bought the lie that the answer is education (from the cradle,if possible). LISTEN YOU IDIOTS - if a child is good it is 99% because of his/her home life, not because of the social conditioning of your institutions. Your institutions CANNOT REPLACE A GOOD HOME! In fact they corrupt the good kids we do send there.
CLOSE THEM DOWN or privatize them.