Government Bill

Bul 2

pe
TEACHING PROFESSION ACT

By BETTY GRIFFIN

Legislation as applied to the provin-
ce’s public school teachers shows the
Social Credit government has not forgot-
ten its goal of destroying the B.C.
Teachers’ Federation as the professional
and economic association protecting the
interests of teachers. The April 2 legisla-
tion, some of it new and some amended,
is aimed at carving up the more than
70-year old BCTF through divide-and-
rule tactics.

The key piece of legislation is Bill 20,
the Teaching Profession Act, which,
together with the changes introduced in
Bill 19, the Industrial Relations Reform
Act, consequentially amends the existing
School Act. There are also additional
amendments to the School Act intro-
duced separately. :

Teachers, who have fought Socred
restraint in education under succeeding
progressive leadership, have been made
to pay through a variety of measures.
These include:

@ Ending compulsory membership in
the BCTF;

@ Forcing local teachers association
to choose, in the next nine months,
between remaining an association gov-
erned by an amended School Act, or
certifying as a trade union under the new
and bitterly contentious Industrial Rela-
tions Act which would replace the Labor
Code;

e Establishing, under Bill 20, a Col-
lege of Teachers, a measure that ushers in
an era of unprecedented centralized con-
trol by the government over the training,
certification, discipline and professional
development of teachers;

@ Abolishing the BCTF membership
of principals and vice-principals, prohib-
iting their membership in any union or
local teachers association and forcing the
administrators to join the teachers’ col-

The first and second measures are

clearly aimed at destroying, if not the
BCTF itself, then certainly the federa-

_ 6 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, APRIL 8, 1987

tion’s effectiveness as a professional and
economic body. The government is
clearly convinced that some teachers’
associations will prefer the trade union
route, having canvassed and voted for it
at BCTF conventions, while other, more
conservative associations will opt for a
non-certified association, resulting in
divisions within the federation.

Choosing either the option of teacher
association or trade union allows
teachers to bargain for wages and benef-
its, but the latter includes the right*to
negotiate working and learning condi-
tions. It also introduces the right to
strike, and opens the door to lockouts by
school trustees.

But under either option, teachers will
effectively remain under public sector
wage controls because of new provisions
giving Industrial Relations Commis-
sioner Ed Peck the authority to review
settlements according to “ability to pay.”
Thus, wage curbs will remain in place
despite the scheduled 1988 demise of the
Compensation Stabilization Program
— which, incidentally, will still control
the current round of teacher bargaining.

The establishment of the College of
Teachers — in which membership is
compulsory — represents new pinnacles
in centralized control. Under its pro-
posed legislation the government can
amend any section it doesn’t like.
Nothing in the bill guarantees the right of
participation in the governing of the col-
lege by teachers, who at least had some
input in the Ministry of Education. The
college, governed by 15 elected and five
government-appointed directors, takes
over several functions and duties of the
ministry.

The legislation also threatens the teachers’
own democratically-established judicial
system that included elected committees
and the right of appeal to the annual
BCTF convention.

- The measures governing local admin-
istrators exploit a vulnerable spot within
the federation, which at its last conven-
tion had to deal with moves on the part
of some principals and vice-principals to
end their membership in the federation.
For some administrators, the concerns
of an apparent conflict of duties in the
case of labor disputes motivated the
move, but the federation seemed well on
its way to resolving the dispute.

The new legislation makes principals
management, by stipulating that they
assist trustees in resolving teacher-school
board disputes, and in formulating
proposals for collective bargaining as
well as assisting the board during negoti-
ations. Principals and vice-principals
must sign individual contracts with their
school boards.

From a Socred perspective, Bill 20
does the job that Bill 19, the new labor
legislation, accomplishes. It centralizes
to an unprecedented degree authority
and control in the hands of the state. And
just as labor is gearing up for a fight
against Bill 19, so too are teachers reject-
ing Bill 20 and the amendments to the
School Act.

Goverament Bill

ee
First Session, Thirty fourth Parliament
36 Blirabeth Th 1987
Legislative Assimmbly of British Columbia

BILL 19

INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS REFORM ACT,
1987 -

Honourable Lyall Hanson :
Minister of Labour and Consumer Services

————

By FRED WILSON

With Bill 19, the Industrial Relations
Reform Act, 1987, the Vander Zalm
government has made clear its intention to
de-unionize British Columbia.

Vander Zalm has eliminated the right to
strike, subordinating it completely to the
arbitrary whim of government, and re-
introduced compulsory arbitration, the
downfall of the W.A.C. Bennett govern-
ment in 1972.

Right-to-work legislation, long the dream
of the ultra-right and big business, has now
arrived in B.C. with Bill 19 which legislates
against closed shop agreements by opening
the closed shop to non-union and anti-
union workers.

Union busting through corporate re-
organization has been given legislative
authority through comprehensive amend-
ments to common employer designation,
successor rights and decertification proce-
dures.

Secondary picketing and “hot declara-
tions” have been banned in an attempt to
break the single most important weapon of
organized labor, the solidarity of the picket
line.

Everything requested by the province’s
most belligerent employers has been
granted in the legislation tabled April 2 in
Victoria — and more.

By comparison with Bill 3, the centre
piece of the anti-labor legislation that
sparked Operation Solidarity in 1983, this
legislation is fundamentally more perni-
cious, more far reaching and destructive of
trade union power.

Vander Zalm’s legislation has not merely
attempted to “fine tune” labor law on
behalf of employers. This package will fun-
damentally re-structure labor relations and
bring labor under the constant supervision
and potential intervention of the state.

Under the guise of “individual rights”, -

the collective rights of workers have been
decimated. Bill 19 is a massive assault on
democracy, the thin edge of an ultra right,
fundamentalist wedge which avowedly
seeks ‘ta new era of labor relations”. That
new era can be described as repression,
authoritarianism and corporatism.

The Industrial Relations Reform Act is
comprehensive legislation requiring days of

study before its full implications become _

clear. That, and the unprecedented media
snow job organized by the Socreds to
release the legislation, explain the superficial
understatement that accompanied the
initial media reports of the legislation.

One of the authors the legislation, Socred
deputy minister Bob Plecas, presided over

the media briefing April 2 in Victoria. The
three hour “lock up” with the media prior
to,the tabling of the bills in the legislature
had no precedent for legislation other than a
budget. But the lock up was not just an
advance look at Bill 19. It was a selling job
in which Plecas implored reporters to accept
that the legislation is not everything that it
is.
To understand what Bill 19 attempts to
accomplish, it should be analyzed according
to five political objectives of the government
to break trade union power in B.C.: the
establishment of a new labor super-
bureaucracy with massive rights to break
strikes and impose compulsory arbitration;
the introduction of a form of right-to-work
legislation; the legalization. of union bust-
ing; the breaking of picket line solidarity;
and the further intrusion of the state into the
internal affairs of unions.

Bill 19 will re-structure labor relations in
B.C. by abolishing the Labor Code and
replacing it with an amended version of the
code called the Industrial Relations Act.
This Act, however, no longer subscribes to
the basic principles of the Labor Code
introduced in 1973 by the NDP govern-
ment.

The Labor Code, which was adminis-
tered by the Labor Relations Board, incor-
porated a clear bias in favor of collective
bargaining, and that was included in the
“principles and objects” of the LRB in Sec-
tion 27 of the Code. The objective of encou-
raging collective bargaining was removed in
1984 and replaced with “securing and main-
taining industrial peace.” Vander Zalm has
taken this even further with instructions
written in the new Industrial Relations Act
that the objective of labor law must be “to
regard the public interests and the rights of
individuals . .. and recognize the desirability
... of a competitive market economy.”

The “IRA” will henceforth be enforced
by anew labor super-bureaucracy called the
Industrial Relations Council. The council
will be headed by the “‘super-cop” of labor
relations, the Industrial Relations Commis-
sioner. The $130,000 per year job of com-
missioner has been given to former CSP
boss Ed Péck. Peck will have enormous
personal powers to prevent strikes, end
strikes and impose compulsory arbitration.

The council will have two separate div-
isions each headed by a chair. The Adjudi-
cation Division will perform some of the
functions of the old LRB such as certifying
and decertifying unions and ruling on unfair
labor practices and picketing matters and
other disputes under the Act. The other
division will be the Disputes Resolution
Division, which will closely monitor all
labor disputes and have sweeping media-
tion.and interventionist powers.

The powers vested in the new Industrial
Relations Council and the commissioner
render the right to strike in B.C. to a privi-
lege that will be arbitrarily given or denied.

This power begins with the requirement
that a copy of every collective agreement be
on file with the Industrial Relations Council
and that formal notice be given to the coun-
cil each time a’ union commences collective
bargaining. Further, no strike may com-

- mence until 72 hours after notice has been

given to the council.

Then the interventionist power of the
commissioner kicks in. Peck can unilater-
ally order a range of measures that will
prevent — or end — any strike.

Before a strike has commenced, Peck
may order mediation, even if not requested
by both parties, and no strike may then take
place until 48 hours after the mediator has
booked out and reported to the commis-
sioner.

Similarly, Peck can order a “fact finder”
who will have 20 days to report to the com-
missioner on the “facts” in a dispute. How-