‘Confusion now hath made his masterpiece.” It’s a line from Act 2 Scene 3 of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, and King Duncan has just been found murdered.
The speaker, an outraged MacDuff, cries that the murderer has “stolen thence the life of the building.”
So why do I think of those lines when I drive past a closed and empty school with teachers out on the sidewalk with picket signs?
Rarely has there been a labour dispute, even one involving both government and the B.C. Teachers’ Federation, when there has been so much confusion, miscommunication and downright misleading information as the current out-of-control wrangle between the two major actors in this tragedy for public education.
Vince Ready, the master magician of mediation has, at least for now, declined to have anything to do with this sorry mess. Ready, well known for his impeccable sense of strategic timing, might reappear in August if nothing changes, but right now, there is no win in this for him.
In the meantime, things have gone badly for 41,000 teachers, 500,000 kids and their parents, school district administrators and the taxpaying public who employ all the major actors in this tragedy.
There is little point in going back, again, to the opening scene where government in 2002 arbitrarily stripped the teacher contract of what teachers needed then and need now more than ever — some assurances about class sizes and the number of children in each classroom whose special needs require teacher support well above what is normal.
At this point, we can temporarily set aside two Supreme Court decisions that clearly stated the wrong-headed nature of this unconstitutional action or the subsequent investigation that revealed a government agenda to provoke a full strike, now accomplished.
It might be, according to some sources close to the negotiation table, that the premier has taken the court losses personally. After all, she instigated the contract-stripping in the first place.
“Justice delayed is justice denied” is a legal cliché, but in this instance, the government seems to prefer to stall and maybe lawyer its way out of what was an incredibly expensive political and legal blunder.
Now the BCTF, rather than looking to the immediate interests of its members and holding fire until September when a withdrawal of service might mean something, fires all of its guns at once. The union puts its members out on the street in the last two weeks of June, which strategically leaves it out of ammunition and cripples the financial interests and professional preferences of its members.
This also relieves government of having to be too concerned about the situation until September.
In fact, the strike is a windfall for government — it was recovering as much as an additional $16.5 million a week in teacher and support-staff salaries during the job action, plus nearly $5 million more by chopping wages.
Some estimates suggest that the province now saves an additional $82.5 million each week a full-blown strike proceeds.
Consequently, the employer — the government — is not feeling much pain or pressure from the strike.
This week, with the B.C. Labour Relations Board now firmly in charge of the public-education system, a new administrative direction was issued to districts by the LRB.
The short version is that school districts are to prepare for the local union class lists for Grade 10 and 11 students with the most recent report card marks. The union will then distribute the list to classroom teachers. Within 48 hours, the teachers will advise the local union, not the school district, of any changes. The union will then send the amended lists back to the school district within the same 48 hours.
While the mechanics of this make a kind of initial sense, because teachers will be harder to find after June 30, some teacher locals, Victoria included, are rumoured to be resisting.
To avoid a contempt order, some teachers in Victoria and elsewhere might be submitting an “I” for “incomplete.”
More games with the kids, the ultimate losers, who have worked hard for those marks.
Setting aside any consideration of student confidentiality, the LRB update advises that the local union “may request that administrators provide the class lists to the picket captains at the schools,” presumably for something else to do while out on the street.
Shakespeare said it best: “This is beyond words and beyond belief.”
Geoff Johnson is a (gratefully) retired superintendent of schools.
