Is tentative teacher's deal good enough?

The president of the Central Okanagan Teachers’ Association (COTA), is welcoming the tentative deal for BC’s 49,000 members that will see salary gains, but says the ongoing struggle continues with excessive class size and composition challenges.

The BC Teachers’ Federation executive is recommending members approve the deal they say will help recruitment and retention and take teachers from near the lowest paid in Canada to among the highest.

Increases of 3.24 per cent, 5.5 per cent and 2 per cent over the three-year deal will see the most experienced teachers’ annual salary increase by up to $13,500 over the length of the contract term, while new teachers will be bumped by up to $8,500.

“Teachers from other provinces aren’t willing to come here if their wages aren’t similar or they’re going to take a loss,” COTA president Susan Bauhart told Kelowna10, while acknowledging this region is not facing the shortages being experienced in other communities in BC.

“I would suggest the [salary] increase our president is talking about is very important. We all know the cost of living here is high, our TTOCs (on-call teachers), it is very hard for them to make a living, there are some who are desperate to get jobs here… but there’s a price for living in Kelowna,” she said.

Is the increase enough?

The proposed salary increases for teachers mirror those agreed upon recently by members of the BC Government Employees Union, the province’s biggest public sector union.

Asked if local members would find the increases on offer enough, Bauhart suggested it was the best they could hope for.

“Salary and workload were the two biggest things teachers were after this round,” she said. “The bargaining team has probably negotiated the most they can get under the current circumstance in terms of salary. Others might disagree with me, but my sense is that."

But when it comes to the other key bargaining point, she was not enthusiastic.

"Unfortunately, there’s not a lot [in the contract] to address workload. And that will be the disappointment here.”

Bauhart said the lack of progress on workload could factor into teachers’ decision come the Nov.16-18 ratification vote but she could not say how that might affect the outcome.

“Whether people believe me, it’s all about supports for students. Workload is all about the restored language and [teacher-student] ratios… our classrooms are becoming more and more challenging,” she said.

While BC teachers won a famous Supreme Court victory in 2016 forcing the government to backtrack on legislating class size and composition out of the contract, it remains a constant battleground come negotiations.

“We’ve got resource teachers that have case loads that are unworkable … we don’t have enough psychologists to do the testing that needs to be done to support students, particularly the vulnerable.

“I’m not being critical, you can only get so much at a certain time [in bargaining] … salary they’ve addressed the best they can… I think workload is left for another day.”