B.C. Minister of Education, Peter Fassbender. (Photo Credit: Legislative Assembly of British Columbia)
Minister of Education Peter Fassbender has rejected the BC Teachers' Federation's (BCTF) call for binding arbitration.
BCTF President Jim Iker put forward the option on Friday, asking that the two parties send the issues to a third party to decide. These issues would include compensation, benefits, and preparation time. The government was also asked “to leave the matters currently before the court, and related to the court ruling, to the courts.”
If the government had agreed to binding arbitration, the BCTF would then hold a province-wide vote to end the strike and bring students back to school.
However, Fassbender officially rejected the BCTF's suggestion on Saturday, calling it “another empty effort to give parents and teachers a false hope that there is a simple way to resolve the dispute.”
Fassbender claims that the BCTF made it clear that there would be various preconditions for the binding arbitration that would tilt it in favour of the teachers. He also says that there is still not a written proposal from the BCTF. Additionally, the Minister asserts that the teachers' union will “need to get in the affordability zone on wages and benefits so we can get to work on negotiating class size and composition—which both sides agree is the most important issue.”
BCTF's tweets on Fassbender's rejection of binding arbitration. (Photo Credit: Twitter)
Fassbender declared that the labour dispute still needs to be settled at the bargaining table and he again invited the teachers to vote to end the strike while mediation continues.
According to one teacher at Friday's meeting of teachers in Kelowna, however, that's unlikely. She said that as much as she wants to get back to her students, she sees E80 as a violation of her rights and will not sign them away.
This full-scale strike has continued since June 17, and there are still no signs that it will end soon.
