drop in the bucket and a pathetic effort to maintain the fiction of "solidarity." The decision to give this money to the BCTF was made by union executives making six-figure salaries eager to be in a photo-op for the left press. The BCTF is on the verge of collapse, their vote in favour of binding arbitration was Stalinesque. The teachers are out thousands of dollars they won't get back even if the government agreed to their absurd demands and the leaders of the union are desperate to keep their high salaries. How about a vote that gives teachers other options for ending the strike? They are desperate for income, take a look at Craigslist for the number of teachers offering a range of services, and when given the choice of going hungry or one option for ending the strike they take the one that might put food on the table.

3 or 4 million vs an adversary with infinite funds, time and a majority? Are you kidding? 3 or 4 million is a bonus or a Communicataions budget for in the corporate world. Your union, proudly bringing a sling shot to a gun fight. Wannabe Nitwits

I hope some time after this strikes ends, you do an honest assessment of the disaster that is the union movement. They are full of little bidness types with their Executive meetings, LinkedIn accounts, lawyers meetings. They are part of the HR dept in their workplaces, management training programs for those too lazy to go to school.

Unions are poorly manged capitalists ventures believing that money is the key to helping working people. Get involved. You'll see. Dues and rules are everything.

Compare the CEOs. Can you tell the difference? Nope. It's all you need to know about modern unions.

http://cupe.ca/paul-moist-national-president

Here's the CEO of WalMart (note the high-res option, too)

http://corporate.walmart.com/our-story/leadership/executive-management/s...

Here's the dreaded GS foe, a Conservative

http://www.conservative.ca/?cc=john-walsh

Let me see if I have this right - In June the teachers go on strike for 10 days wrecking grad ceremonies, exams and final marks. The Labour movement hails their action as "defending bargaining rights", "protecting public education" and "doing it for the kids".

In September, after missing about 6 days of school, the labour movement is setting their hair on fire and blaming the government for the teacher's unreasonable demands and failure to let a pending court action come to its conclusion.

Sounds like the same old lefty, hypocritical rhetoric to me.

If I was a BCTF member I'd be worrying about how they're ever going to pay those loans back. Say hello to higher union dues.

How about the rights of students and parents and general public?
Who would have say poor unions? They are the rich organizations and getting richer if they managed to get what they want everytime. Unfortunately, not the students and parents and general public. Because they are unions, their voice is always louder and stronger then others. Talking about fairness and rights, I honestly don't think any union strike is fair to all people but just to the union and the members. The public always suffers without any powerful channel to voice against the unions. The public has been suffering for a long time during every unionized strike and the union knows well to take the public as hostage which can lead to huge pressure to the government to give union what they want. In Canada, union actions are mostly one side advantage to the unions but not to the general public (although, union always add some points to claim that their actions are for the good of the general public, just like adding a tiny side dish to the main course), that is why the support from general public is no longer as strong as before and now everyone just wait for Christy Clark's government to handle them.

This is a fight between the NDP and the Libs. On the face of it, this is the unions supporting a brother union. But a closer look reveals this is the unions lined up against the Libs. Thihs is an old grudge playing itself out in a new fight. Partisan politics. Nothing more.The Libs are playing hardball with the BCTF and originally stripped contract provisions because the NDP negotiated them. The NDP negotiated those terms with the BCTF because the Socreds played hardball with the BCTF and the other unions. And so on back it goes.

Many teachers are really getting into tough financial times. It is tough to stand up to a bully, and that is exactly what the BC Liberals have become. They've been told twice to play nice, and own up to their responsibilities, and they've shirked their duties. They are still dragging teachers through the mud. These other unions are lending teachers some lunch money to make it through the day. Teachers are giving up so much because they really truly care about the learning conditions of their students. So much so that they will give it ALL up to a 3rd party so long as E80 is gone. That is serious dedication to the cause of sane class/comp caps.

It's great that the other unions are showing support, but the BCTF cannot take it. Think about how weak it makes them look. Also, is it going to get paid back? Give me a break. The BCTF is not getting their money out of this! They're not getting a signing bonus, at least not one that nets ahead of the $6000 they've lost already!

The teachers have been by and large great. Iker has walked them into this blind alley thinking they have a monopoly on teachers (they don't) and ignoring that the Ministry has a monopoly on BCTF jobs, with no strike fund, no real leverage, and very little moral right to exercise it, if indeed teachers are first responders etc.

The Ministry is morally worse for breaking its negotiated promises re class size, but if it is that important to them to retain budget flexibility in a zero-zero-zero environment, well, maybe it is. The taxpayer is fed up.

IMO, given their monopoly on union jobs, the union should collaborate with the employer and move this process out of the collective agreement into a distinct budgeting process.

Leaders occasionally have to do hard things, the hardest is to admit you miscalculated and were wrong and cost your people. Jim Iker, that's where your at. The other unions are doing the right thing to offer; but you have to man up and NOT take it.

fire all the striking teachers and hire new teachers...........let the old teachers strike forever

Not on the union side this time
"They are the rich organizations and getting richer if they managed to get what they want everytime"

Teacher wages in BC have lagged inflation for almost ten years now, meaning that the "real" cost of teacher salaries has fallen about 12%-15& in the past decade.

Tax dollars, on the other hand, inflate roughly at the rate of general inflation.

If you can collect inflated tax dollars and pay out contracts in a rate less than inflation moving forward, the only people getting "rich", relatively speaking, is the tax collecting authority, since the spread between the two rates is essentially turned into surplus fiscal capacity.

Furthermore, BCTF dues are collected as a percentage of wages; if real wages are falling, and employment is more or less stable, unless the BCTF raises their dues rate, then they correspondingly suffer a loss financially, in "real" terms.

Finally, the BCTF wage offer is actually less than anticipated inflation going forward; the teachers are offering to take a further "real" pay cut going forward.

Costs associated with this negotiation are almost all related to class size and composition, of which there is no financial benefit to the BCTF.

The BCTF is not "rich and getting richer".

If you truly think that, you simply don't care to check your prejudices at the door when speaking of something you demonstrably have no technical knowledge of.

You should really be asking the Government of BC what they have done with the surplus fiscal capacity created in the education system over the past ten years.

Had they any brains or integrity, they would have, after losing the first court case, set up a contingency or escrow account on the provincial books, and simply sat on that surplus fiscal capacity until such time as the appeals process exhausted itself; that inflation created surplus fiscal capacity would more or less solve a great deal of the current issue.

Instead, and proving they fully have no intent on honouring the court decisions, even if they lose again, they simply absorbed that surplus fiscal capacity into the system and spent it, and now plead poverty

Obviously, both sides have to move.

That being said, the people shouting tired old slogans such as "unions and teachers are greedy" continue to show that they could not count to three if you started them at two