Teachers winning PR battle

Labour minister Mike de Jong gets top marks from an NDP public-relations expert for the way he handled himself in introducing Bill 12, which imposed a contract settlement on B.C.'s teachers.

"It looked like it was the toughest thing he's ever had to do in his life, and it was paining him to do this," Victoria consultant Brad Zubyk told the Straight on October 17.

But that all changed a few days later, when de Jong began "banging the drum" and encouraging teachers to cross the picket lines, said Zubyk, who actively campaigned for the NDP in last May's election and was the NDP caucus communications director for the first year of premier Mike Harcourt's regime.

"I didn't understand why [the Liberals] gave up on their first positioning," he said.

To Zubyk, it's as if the Liberals couldn't resist falling back into their first-term rhetoric, which was, as he puts it: "That damn union, we're out to get the union." The fact that the teachers' walkout is illegal is irrelevant from a public-relations perspective, Zubyk said. "All PR's about is where the public's at."

What the public really care about is having their kids back in school, Zubyk added. So the pressure on the government can only increase.

The Liberals should pay attention to the fate of Mike Harris, who resigned as Ontario premier in October 2002 after a seven-year stint in office, Zubyk warned. "What brought Harris down was the public's exhaustion with the neverending confrontation," he said. "People got to the point where they said, 'Even if we thought he was right four years ago, we're sick of it.'?"

On October 17, the NDP tried to convince the legislature's Speaker that the teachers dispute was so critical that the house should suspend normal proceedings and hold an urgent debate on the issue.

"[T]he events of today and the events of last week clearly constitute an emergency," Opposition house leader Mike Farnworth told Speaker Bill Barisoff. Such a suspension is permitted in some circumstances under the legislature's standing orders. Labour minister Mike de Jong opposed it, in part on the grounds that the matter was before the courts.

Later, Barisoff gave his ruling: nope, but thanks for the suggestion.

The house rules allow such a suspension when there's a sudden emergency requiring immediate debate, Barisoff told the house, and when there is "no provision" for debate. As well, tradition has it that the rule doesn't apply when budget debate is underway, as it was that day.

Of course, the fancy legalese likely did not come from Barisoff, a nonlawyer who owned a trucking company before being elected Liberal MLA for Penticton-Okanagan Valley in 1996.

Rather, it was more wisdom from the legislature's clerks, who also "advised" the Liberals in 2001 that two MLAs were insufficient for the NDP to form the official opposition.

The former chair of the B.C. Public School Employers' Association is blaming the teachers dispute in part on the shutting out of school boards from the bargaining process.

Ken Denike, a UBC geography professor emeritus who spent 17 years as a Vancouver school-board trustee, is running for the board again as a Non-Partisan Association candidate in the November 19 municipal election.

The bargaining process was "short-circuited" this year, Denike told the Georgia Straight. "Increasingly, the government just can't stay out of the frontline," he said, noting that dozens of school boards have passed motions calling on the government to negotiate with teachers.

"The bureaucracy [in Victoria] is basically running this thing-it's gone right into the ground."

Denike was unhappy with the October 13 ruling by B.C. Supreme Court judge Brenda Brown, who ordered that the B.C. Teachers' Federation stop issuing strike pay to its members but imposed no fines. By levying no fines, Brown left the teachers' war chest alone, he noted. "What it does is leave the BCTF with one huge bankroll for something in the future," Denike said. "It's like a time bomb."

According to NDP financial statements filed with Elections B.C., the B.C. Teachers' Federation gave nothing to the NDP in 2004 and during this year's election campaign.

However, it did mount an election advertising campaign, part of a $5-million effort to "make public education an issue in the provincial election", according to a letter by BCTF president Jinny Sims published in the June 18 Victoria Times-Colonist.

"Many voters thought that the Liberal record on education was a good reason to vote for another party," Sims wrote. "However, the fact remains that the BCTF has not contributed to a political party."

On the other hand, the BCTF has been paying annual dues of approximately $248,000 since it affiliated with the B.C. Federation of Labour in 2003 for a three-year trial period. And the labour federation gave more than $400,000 to the NDP during this year's campaign, and more than $136,000 last year.

It's called passing the buck.