Bargaining teacher contract a two-way street

SATURDAY MORNING EDITORIAL — As expected, B.C. teachers voted heavily in favour — 89 per cent — of giving their bargainers a mandate to call rotating strikes if need be to back up their demands.

NDP leader Adrian Dix was in Kamloops Friday, adding some additional politics to a situation that is already part political, part legal, part philosophical.

Local media quoted Dix as blasting the Liberal government for its record of legislation and bargaining with respect to teachers, which is fair enough.

The government has been punished by the B.C. Supreme Court for taking class size and composition out of teachers’ contracts, though that ruling is on hold pending appeal.

But suggests the pressure is on the government to reach an agreement with the teachers. Why is that?

There are two sides to bargaining. They sit down in a room, bluster and cajole, make offers and demands, sometimes concessions, and eventually work things out.

It’s an an axiom of collective bargaining that a contract will always be reached, one way or another. One way is through a disruptive strike, another is to obtain an agreement before a strike happens, avoiding all the inconvenience that comes with it.

Supporting teachers is fine — they do important work — we have to keep in mind that there is a significant cost to reverting to old classroom formulas unless government and school district calculations are off.

There’s a responsibility at the bargaining table to find a way through it all that protects the education of our kids but doesn’t break the bank, either.

And that responsibility falls on teachers as much as it does on the government.