The British Columbia Teachers’ Federation is set to go on strike … sort of. 87% of the province’s 41,000 teachers support the strike.
Notice anything peculiar about this history of teachers’ strikes in BC?
h/t Ron in Kelowna
The British Columbia Teachers’ Federation is set to go on strike … sort of. 87% of the province’s 41,000 teachers support the strike.
Notice anything peculiar about this history of teachers’ strikes in BC?
h/t Ron in Kelowna
Yes, I notice that they weren’t all fired every single time and replaced with Rhesus monkeys.
Why don’t we just have the PTA come together and teach, better than most teachers, until the ‘professionals’ come back to work? We could eliminate all the superfluous BS the Union wants to push, and return to a time when students achieved passing grades in the three Rs, in no time flat.
As a matter of fact, we could tell the ‘professionals’ that we’re not ready to have them come back and continue ‘earning’ their bloated salaries until WE’RE GOOD AND READY for them and are satisfied that they’ve LEARNED THEIR LESSON ONCE AND FOR ALL.
My mom was born in ’42 in a small rural town in Southern Alberta. Her grade four (not split) class size? 34. And I have the picture to prove it. Enough with the “class sizes have grown over time” crap. Enough with the lies that we refuse to challenge.
FIRE THEM. FIRE THEM ALL. FIRE THEM FOR GOOD AND BUST THEIR STUPID UNION.
We really, really have a problem with our teachers.
It’s your kids, folks. If you love them and care for them either home school them or private school them.
The lazy bastards want 15% raise over three years. I have not had a raise for 4 years even though I work my ass off in the high tech area, and I doubt I will get a raise for at least 2 more years given the economic climate.
Also the head of the BC teacher’s union is a frothing at the mouth left wing Marxist. She lies through her teeth too. We should fire the lot like Reagan did with the air traffic controllers and then hire back those who want to teach and who are happy to be paid based on results delivered.
My wife is currently stay at home so we really don’t care one bit if they strike for weeks. My kids will learn far more at home than they will ever learn from the Marxists that run the BC school system.
Here is a snippet from the bio of the Marxist that runs the teacher’s union:
She began her career in 1973 teaching Grade 7 in Prince Rupert. There, the political and social climate of the day was steeped in racism and sexism, so it would prove to be a transformative introduction to her chosen profession. Susan’s experiences in the North fuelled her passion for the fight against social injustice―a passion that still burns brightly today.
Have I mentioned how much I love home schooling?
Right to Work Legislation, I want it in Saskatchewan for sure.
dwright is unbanned (Thanks Kate, been busy lately?)
🙂 🙂
Anyways, yes, our children suffer when the Union decides to get their bitch out for 3 month/year holidays over their careers and gold plated pensions. Poor babys. Whaaa Wa
Beeyotches. All of ’em.
BTW teachers.
As a lead hand Power Engineer I have something to say.
Vacation is not in my vocabulary. Christmas Eve/ Christmas Day?
Forget it.
Summer Vacation at peak tourist season when the 3.5 BILLION Resort property I’M responsible for is falling apart?
Not a chance.
Whine moar, losers.
dwright
The 50 year gap when being a commie wasn’t A-OK?
Mo money.
Nyet Nyet Soviet Nyet Nyet Soviet
In an economic climate as this… selfish, disgusting & perverted.
Ban unions
Would love to read the government negotiator took the Teachers Union head at her word when she demands that education be properly funded. The government puts any increase solely into the classroom, no raise or benefit to the union. Now ask the union, if its for the kids, how about you kick in your portion as the taxpayers have kicked in theirs. If they refuse, as of course they would, go to the media and let the taxpayers see how co-operative the union really is.
Nah, wouldn’t happen.
I wouldnt mind in ths slightest giving them what they want if only kids graduating high school could formulate a coherent blodd sentence and do 2 digit addition in their head.
no one ver flunks public school anymore. why is that? let me check the current bell curve. again, the prob is I bet only the top 5% on the bell even know what a bell curve is. THAT is the problem with teachers all over the continent not just B.C.
25% of the 41,000 didn’t bother to vote to strike.
From the Global site. “Meanwhile, B.C. students frustrated by the continuing impasse between teachers and their employers are planning a protest of their own in support of their teachers.”
Obviously the Marxist teachers have brainwashed their charges well.
If this is the future, Oh Canada, we weep for thee.
In my experience most union members vote for a strike in order to give their bargaining team a strong hand, but don’t want to strike. Normally in a strike that last more than a week the strikers will never make up the lost wages. I don’t know what the teachers union is like, but I know in my workplace there is no desire to strike, except for a small minority.
Actually I don’t notice anything peculiar about the strike history. My gut instinct said, “Let me guess, no strikes when the NDP are in power,” but there were in fact a couple during NDP governments, namely in 1993 and 2000.
Care to enlighten us?
Yeah we got the same situation here in Ontariario.
McSquinty has a problem…a deficit and an implacable teachers union which finances his party.
The interesting part of the history is Global’s telling of it. It appears that every word was written by a BCTF communications flack. Fair and balanced as ever.
I drink beer and make rude noises when I am asleep.
I do it for the children!
One word:
Vouchers
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_voucher
The lesson is, the BCTF doesn’t know how to negotiate with adults, but they can order kids around.
My wife and her business friends all agree, teachers are the worst clients. They know everything about nothing and are their own worst enemies.
Should have forced their hand in September and had the all out war that this situation calls for. The BCTF is corrupt to the core.
Please cut them some slack. You must consider that teachers are people who never stopped being students. The go through school and then stay there to merely trade places with their own teachers.
THAT MEANS THEY HAVE NEVER LEFT SCHOOL TO GROW UP AND KNOW THAT THERE IS A REAL WORLD OUT THERE.
I have met and gotten to know many teacher in my professional life and I tell you they have the mentality and the emotional make up of a high school kid.
The is why they are so self-centered and selfish … like high school kids.
When they say it’s for the kids .. they are talking about themselves.
I want public schools to go the way of the Newspaper medium. There time has passed. There are far batter venues of education nowadays.
Some facts you won’t read in the media:
1) studies show of students going into post-sec education, graduating teachers had the lowest GPA
2) studies show graduating teachers are paid more than most grads
3) studies show teachers take pay cuts when they leave the profession
4) BC is graduating hundreds of teacher grads who can’t find work
5) BC student enrollment is falling every year, with half the decline due to switches to private schools
6) BC has just 184 teaching days a year
And a personal anecdote. My son was treated to a 15 minute speech by his teacher, who complained ‘her family was suffering,’ that the ‘govt was mistreating her,’ and that she ‘cries at home.’
But on a positive note, he knows everything you need to know about recycling and the Inuit.
@ Gord Tulk
One word:
Vouchers
Three words.
End. Public. Schooling.
Parents have always supported the teacher unions who regularly hold them hostage. Stockholm Syndrome at its finest.
Teacher unions are counting on the personal irritation factor created in most families to just make the bother go away. This usually results in the cave in on the part of the board / tax payer representative.
Remedy; make the settlement directly affect the tax payer (not indirectly through increased provincial deficits). Do what households do when money needs to be shifted to new priorities; directly give up something else or shell out some cash.
So when faced with having to accept poorer roads or fewer cops, or an overt surtax to pay the settlement, the taxpayer can see choices we have to make.
“So when faced with having to accept poorer roads or fewer cops, or an overt surtax to pay the settlement, the taxpayer can see choices we have to make.”
I’ll take fewer cops … they mostly are just a nuisance at best and dangerous at worst. They don’t actually do much in the way of serving and protecting, but they do know how to harass, ticket and taze you.
Vouchers please.
“It appears that every word was written by a BCTF communications flack.”
Ah.. I only skimmed the article the first time, looking at the dates. You are dead right – the viewpoint on this article sticks out something awful. “Building on the SUCCESSES (my emphasis) of the previous two strikes” is the most blatant example.
Start off by firing all of the Math teachers. 26,946 pro-strike votes out of a total of 41,000 eligible teachers is 68%!
But don’t fret for us BCers, these convulsions have become just another big yawn.
– no teachers unions. Check.
– no incompetent teachers. Check.
– no ed tax garnishing a quarter of your property tax bill. Check
– no bullies in the classroom. Check.
– no huge unfunded teachers pension liabilities. Check.
– no expensive school buildings. Check.
– no annual salaries for 184 days of “work”. Check.
– no expensive fleet of school buses. Check.
– no utopian indoctrinated useless students. Check.
– no disincentive inducing tenure contracts. check.
http://www.khanacademy.org/
* I have always said a good teacher is worth their weight in gold, others not so much. But the system will not allow any rating on performance. Modern liberals call that discrimination. Accountability hurts feelings, ya see. So what if a poor product is the result. It is for the …. kids?
The BCTF understands and uses rule # 10 incredibly well. That Union has learned the rules for radicals and employes them at every opportunity.
I wonder at the lack of knowledge of these things by our Government and Premiers office. Surely someone is on staff that knows enough about public bargaining to take this Union on.
There is an abundance of greed from the Union that needs to be communicated to the public. It time to take the gloves off and fight back.
Even though the private sector unions have been quite proficient at eliminating private sector unionized jobs in BC for decades, the union mentality is still prevalent. Therefore, there is no hope of breaking unions or passing right-to-work legislation for the foreseeable future.
The BCTF, including virtually all of its officers, are an integral part of the NDP political machinery and are so powerful that the BC Liberals have bent over backwards to appease them. But, as hard as the BC Liberals have tried, they just aren’t the same as the real NDPers (and BC’s “Conservatives” would likely be no different).
Any political fix will only come after parents have pulled enough kids out of the system to bring it to the point of collapse. Since public education (particularly at the provincial level and or large municipality level) is the problem, collapse, and parents deciding what to do about it, is the actual solution. If that were to happen eventually, by then, BC would have likely made a transition to where an actual conservative party might emerge. (Politicians follow, they don’t lead).
The Health care delivery system is identical and in fact, if one were to put the leaders of the two unions (BCTF and BCNU) side by side in a contest, it would be a toss-up to judge the ugliest union / NDP Cow. That has been the case for decades regardless of who they were. They have always resembled the description of the university communist functionary from Ayn Rand’s first novel, “We The Living”.
Education has to catch up to the rest of the world of microchip technology. The education system hasn’t changed much in 100 years. We still freight millions of students for hours a day on buses, to house them for the day in hugely expensive buildings.
In this computer-connected age, why are we still using horse and buggy methods? After elementary school, anyone who wants to learn can do so via internet connection, with a central classroom live feed to the students.
As someone said above,”voucher system”. I have to agree.
Posted by: Abe Froman at March 2, 2012 10:28 AM
No they stopped learning the second the very second the Union Shark made the pinch in their arm that signed the contract in blood.
That bad.
dwright
Vouchers? Nope. That’s a middling “solution” which will still be controlled by the state through intrusive regulation.
Give the money to the state, then get a ticket back? Why not just eliminate the state as a intermediary?
End public schooling and let the free market provide this essential service which will be 100% conflict-free. Public provision always entails conflict among pressure groups intent on using the “system” for propaganda purposes.
Oh, and I’ll also like to have WORLD PEACE.
BC has a glut of teachers too. The substitute teacher’s list is full in every district. New teachers spend years on a sub list before getting a job if ever. Clearly they are being well paid.
There is a “voucher” system, if you home school you will get X amount per kid, to get the money from the government, you must agree to teach the syllabus they give you. Meeting that requirement is quite easy. My wife home schooled my oldest for awhile, but she is such a social butterfly that she need more social interaction than we could give her. However based on concerns about what she is learning we are considering a split Home school/Public school setup, 2 days at home and 3 days at school. My wife can teach the daily required material in about 2 hrs. My wife comes from Malaysia where the exam requirements are much harder than here. The school administrators hate the home school system as it competes with them for funding, if you home school, their funding is reduced.
There seems to be a dual standard in the “co-parent” dogma of the new pegagougery. The children suffer directly if a “co-parent” abandons them. If this is “for the children” then it is for their sense of distrust of authority – and maybe that’s a good thing.
Co-parents on strike for kids rights to feel betrayed/abandoned/used.
@MND 12:57 pm
Here’s what the Ludwig von Mises Institute has to say on vouchers:
“For years, the Right has promoted educational vouchers as an alternative to public schools. This has always been a delusion. The schools that take vouchers become the province of government regulators, while the money for the vouchers is taken out of the hide of taxpayers already being looted for public schools. Vouchers increase, not reduce, government involvement in education.”
http://www.mises.org/daily/260/Voucher-Socialism
emphasis added
Bingo, Rizwan.
Murray Rothbard (an acolyte of von Mises) convinced me of the futiliy of “vouchers”.
A tax credit for the full cost-per-pupil would be better but I’m afraid this would be fraught with regulation too. Just look at the pages and pages of rules/regulations on the medical credit in Canada.
Do you get the daily e-mail from LvM Institute. An extremely valuable resource I find.
Ken(Kulak) 9:09 a.m. “Students planning a protest of their own”.
You can bet that IF it is a student groups idea, that it has been aided and abetted by their teachers. The amount and type of propoganda that students receive in their classrooms regarding how bad teachers have would surprise a lot of parents. As a former school trustee who dealt with negotiating teacher contracts, I can tell you horror stories about what was being said in classrooms (these stories came directly from the students). When it was brought to the school administrations attention – guess what? It never happened.
I would guess that the timing of the teacher strikes reveal a pattern of striking just before provincial elections are held, but I don’t live in BC so that’s just my guess.
Tax credits for education tuition are no help to parents whose income is too low to benefit from them (unless they take the form of cash payments for those who pay no tax already).
Unless government chooses to abandon its involvement in education altogether (not likely in any of our lifetimes), vouchers seem to be the only mechanism open to families seeking some measure of choice in their children’s education.
Good point Roseberry.
EXCEPT, there is such a thing as a “refundable tax credit” which is like a negative tax, a payment to a non-tax-paying person.
Our current income system uses mostly non-refundable tax credits, viz., only have a value to the extent that you’ve paid enough tax to utilize them.
I agree with you that government won’t abandon education in most lifetimes including those of infants born yesterday.
SO, you may be right: vouchers are probably the only practical route, but as outlined above, one which could lead to even MORE government intervention which is no solution at all.
25% of teachers chose NOT to vote at all. The some reports miss it.
Therefore 87% of those who voted, voted to strike.
May 30, 2011
Bargaining Bulletin # 7
I can’t afford to be on strike!” – teacher, 2005
When we had a 2 week walk out in 2005, it challenged all of our finances.
However, it was an investment in our future.
That investment will likely pay a 100 fold dividend. A loss of salary of $3,173 for the two
weeks likely resulted in a $2,094 reduction in take home pay. However, in 40 years (of
working and retirement), the investment in a wage increase yields a cumulative $302,716
dividend.
http://www.cdta71.org/downloads/2110530_CA_BargBulltn_No7.pdf.
May 30, 2011
Bargaining Bulletin # 7
I can’t afford to be on strike!” – teacher, 2005
When we had a 2 week walk out in 2005, it challenged all of our finances.
However, it was an investment in our future.
That investment will likely pay a 100 fold dividend. A loss of salary of $3,173 for the two
weeks likely resulted in a $2,094 reduction in take home pay. However, in 40 years (of
working and retirement), the investment in a wage increase yields a cumulative $302,716
dividend.
http://www.cdta71.org/downloads/2110530_CA_BargBulltn_No7.pdf.
C’mon, they deserve a big raise – after all, they are not just teachers anymore…they’re co-parents now.
/sarc