B.C. teachers’ strike: Why declaring teaching an essential service wouldn’t work

The game of chicken between the B.C. Teachers' Federation and provincial government is picking up speed following Tuesday's overwhelming strike vote.

It's students and their parents, already dealing with the third week of rotating strikes, who have been put in the middle as the two sides race on a collision course.

The teachers turned out in strong numbers to vote 86 per cent in favour of giving their bargaining the strike hammer to use if necessary, possibly as early as Monday.

Negotiations have continued but the gap remains wide on key issues, including the size of any wage increase and the teachers' ability to negotiate class size and composition as part of their collective agreement.

Meanwhile, B.C. Education Minister Peter Fassbender has declared the marking of report cards and exams an essential service to ensure there's no disruption for the province's 500,000 students, especially for those graduating high school and entering post-secondary education this fall.

Ministry spokesman Ben Green told Yahoo Canada News the B.C. Labour Relations Board is not holding a formal hearing on the issue but all sides will be appearing before the board late Wednesday to hold "informal discussions."

[ Related: B.C. teachers vote 86 per cent for all-out strike ]

The teachers' federation suffered a setback last week when the board ruled the government had the right to cut wages by 10 per cent and to implement a partial lockout at the end of the month in retaliation for the rotating walkouts.

Fassbender wrote the federation Tuesday, saying the lockout would not apply to teachers working in summer school, assuming there's no full-scale strike.

More than 49,000 students were enrolled in public school summer courses last year, Green said.

No one from the teachers' federation was available to comment.

Whatever the outcome of this confrontation, the decades-long bitterness and mistrust between the two sides, dotted by strikes, back-to-work legislation and court fights, is bound to continue. Observers think the bargaining process is damaged beyond repair.

Some might wonder why the government doesn't simply legislate teaching as an essential service, banning strikes and removing the sword of uncertainty that dangles perpetually above families' heads?

Robert W. Murray thinks that would be a great idea. But he's also here to tell you why it will never happen in B.C. or any other province.

Murray is vice-president of research for the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, a Winnipeg-based think tank. Although he's an adjunct professor of political science at the University of Alberta specializing in international relations, Murray's previous gig was as policy director for Ontario's Catholic school system. He served as its chief strategist in their last round of bargaining.

Governments usually reserve essential-service designations for sectors directly affecting public safety, such as policing, fire protection and health care. But Murray believes education should be on that list, not just classroom teaching but also supervision of extra-curricular activities.

“It becomes very easy for teachers to use students as leverage," in the current bargaining process, Murray told Yahoo Canada News in a phone interview.

"They don’t like to admit that’s what they’re doing but ultimately when teachers take a stand the only recourse they have available to them, other than protesting at politicians’ offices or the legislature, is somehow going to involve kids. I just don’t seen that as a legitimate bargaining tool whatsoever.”

Murray would include extra-curricular activities such as coaching sports and organizing trips or supervising grad activities. They're usually targeted first in any dispute in work-to-rule campaigns (which started in B.C. in the spring). Most jurisdictions don't define withdrawal from those activities as strike action.

But Murray believes they're a key part of an education system's goal of developing a well-rounded student, socially as well as academically.

Removing the right to strike would still allow teachers to bargain contracts in good faith, Murray argued.

"They would still have a number of recourse mechanisms, including mediation and arbitration," he said. "However, their ability to strike would be curtailed.

“Designating them an essential service prevents them from disrupting the day-to-day functions of the education system if the bargaining process is not going very well.”

[ Related: Ontario PC platform sees larger class sizes, cancels teacher pay hikes ]

But there's a price to be paid for declaring teachers essential, Murray warned.

“In fact, what often gets lost in the discussion over teachers’ essential service designations is that if a government decides to designate a service as essential, this automatically requires a significant pay increase that would reflect the essential nature of what it is that they’re doing," he said.

That should include paying teachers for extra-curricular activities they now volunteer to do on their own time, Murray contended.

"If you are going to designate a teacher group as an essential service and you want to involve not only stopping full strikes but also this idea of work to rule, then you have to include those under the collective agreement and compensate teachers for them adequately," he said.

And that, of course, is what dooms the whole idea. Governments will blanch at the price tag, or more accurately at taxpayers' reaction to it.

“The notion of increasing not only their day-to-day pay in the classroom but also compensating them for extra-curriculars would put average teacher salaries up over six figures at the top of their grid, which really the public has no appetite for," Murray said.

Teachers wouldn't accept this arrangement, in any case. They want to be compensated for extra-curricular work but believe their ability to strike has led to improved working conditions in the past, he said. And in many provinces, teachers' unions have the political clout keep the idea off the table.

There have been "what I call high-level discussions" about the idea, Murray said, but it's almost certainly a non-starter.

“It would take incredible courage for a political party to take on teachers’ unions in that kind of light," he said.