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October 4, 2013 - No. 13
Cooperative Gains Mandate
Makes a Mockery of Collective Bargaining
Demand Increased Investments
in
Education!
• Demand Increased
Investments in Education!
• Cooperative Gains Mandate Makes a Mockery of
Collective Bargaining
• Government Must Fund Salary and Benefit
Increases!
• No! to Further Education Cuts
• The Issues of Mandates and Funding
- Donna Petersen
• Government Turns Settlement with Education
Workers into
Another Attack on K-12 Public Education - Charles Boylan
• School Trustees Face the Consequences
• Letters to the Editor
For Your Information
• BC Government's Cooperative Gains Mandate
• Explanation and Discussion of "Provincial
Framework Agreement"
Demand Increased Investments in Education!
The joint provincial bargaining committee representing
34,000 BC
K-12 public school employees has concluded a provincial framework
agreement with
the BC Public School Employers' Association (BCPSEA). The joint
committee bargains province-wide for 27,000 members of the Canadian
Union of Public
Employees (CUPE) and 7,000 members of the International Union of
Operating Engineers (IUOE) Local 963. The BCPSEA bargains for 60 school
districts
with each district considered the employer.
 Each union local and school
board must now approve or reject the
September 18 framework agreement. In addition, they will negotiate
local issues
including staffing levels, hours of work, certain benefits and various
other matters but all constrained within budgets controlled by the
provincial
government.
The framework includes salary increases of 1 per cent
from July 1,
2013, another 2 per cent from February 1, 2014 and a third increase of
0.5 per cent
on May 1, 2014. The major problem with the framework agreement lies in
the refusal of the provincial government to recognize it as a
legitimate agreement
which requires funding. Education Minister Peter Fassbender has already
declared that the government will not give one penny to fund the
agreement even
though the provincial government is the sole source of revenue for the
school districts. This brazen trampling on the dignity of education
workers and school
districts is a sign of a government on an anti-social rampage.
Under a phony austerity agenda, the Clark government
attacks social
programs and refuses to invest in public education. It has concocted a
"Cooperative
Savings Mandate" (CSM) as a political mechanism to force the 60 school
boards to cut programs, services, hours of work and even make layoffs
to meet
any commitments under the framework agreement.
The Clark government, as the overall employer of the
34,000 education
support workers, refuses to meet its social responsibilities. It holds
the threat over
the heads of teachers, support workers and school boards that if they
do not submit, then they are against the law. In fact, the government's
positions render
the framework agreement devoid of substance. It is a farce which
teachers and support staff and all people of BC must denounce. Both
the workers
involved and the school districts have an interest in rejecting the
framework agreement and pressuring the government to stop attacking
public education
and its workers.
Demand the government fund the framework agreement and
invest in public education!
Defend the rights of education workers and the rights of
all to the highest quality public education!
Cooperative Gains Mandate Makes a Mockery of Collective
Bargaining
Premier Christy Clark introduced the Cooperative Gains
Mandate (CGM) in 2012 to dictate the outcome of negotiations with all
BC public sector workers.
This has effectively gutted fair collective bargaining, as
traditionally practised during the post-WWII social contract. The
dictate is backed up with the threat
that if workers do not agree to the arrangement and go on strike, they
will be legislated back to work with jail time and huge individual and
collective fines
if they resist.
 Preceding the CGM was the
"net zero mandate" imposed on
the 2010 negotiations with BC public sector workers. Designed to
provide "cost-effective
and financially prudent" results, it imposed a two-year agreement with
no "net increases in total compensation costs" but a possibility for
"compensation
trade-offs -- savings found through changes in collective agreements to
fund compensation increase." (For example, trade benefits for wages.) A
number of
unions did agree to liquidate formerly negotiated benefits to add a few
dollars to salaries.
As concerns the current CGM, as in education, so in
health care and every other aspect of public services or social
programs, the Clark CGM is neither
co-operative nor a gain. It is a "mandate" in the meaning of an
"order," but not at all in the meaning of a power given by voters to
government to act in
a certain way. This is because the polity cannot and will not give any
government a mandate to deny the rights of working people.
Even the electoral "mandate" given to Clark on May 14 is
highly questionable. Only 26 per cent of registered voters voted for
this government. None
of these particular "mandates" or any other of the many actions of the
Liberal government since 2001 was discussed in any depth with the
voters.
The election
and supposed mandate has hinged on high cost TV advertising,
disinforming the polity, using a focus on personalities, and in some
cases, outright threats
issued by employers to their employees to vote Liberal or expect to
lose their
jobs.
The BC working class must face and oppose the system of
government that denies the rights of workers. Workers' rights include
the right to negotiate
the terms of working conditions and to agree without coercion to wages,
benefits and pensions acceptable to themselves and their peers.
Government mandates
that deny workers' rights and drive down the standard of living are
unacceptable. Government disinvestment in social programs and public
services, which
is wrecking BC, is unacceptable.
Oppose the Clark Government's
Cooperative Gains Mandate!
Free Collective Bargaining Is a Right That Cannot Be Denied with
Government Mandates!
Our Security Lies in the Fight for the Rights of All!
Government Must Fund Salary and Benefit Increases!
BC public education workers must take a clear stand
against further cuts to education programs and services. A principled
stand to defend public K-12
education requires rejecting a framework agreement between
representatives of school
districts and
education workers that has no power to require the provincial
government to
finance the 3.5 per cent increase in salaries.
 The Canadian Union of
Public Employees fought for
province-wide bargaining on the premise it would directly negotiate
with a provincial government
responsible for funding any new contract. The government in turn has
sidestepped its financial responsibility to increase investments in
education by
interposing a BC Public School Employers' Association (BCPSEA)
representing school districts, which has no capacity to fund
agreements. The Clark
government then declares both parties to bargaining must follow its
"mandates," which makes a mockery of collective bargaining.
The latest government mandate, the Cooperative Savings
Mandate (CSP) dictates that all salary increases in education as in
other public sectors must
come from "internal savings." No "savings" are to be had in any school
board budgets. Any "excess" funding has been extinguished during a
decade and
more of the refusal of provincial governments to increase investments
in public education.
The province has complete control over all funding of
public K-12 education (as well as over other public sectors). The
consequence of an unfunded
agreement, if passed by the members of the two parties, will be
decreased services and cuts to support staff employment. Some argue
that boards can cut
high paid administrators or find other "misspent" dollars but that does
not address the real cuts to education programs that have occurred over
the past 15
years. The boards have no reserves; they have been cut to the bone.
Schools have been closed; teachers and support workers laid off;
maintenance is at an
all time low; carbon taxes have been dumped on boards; it is all an
endless litany of attacks on public K-12 education across BC.
No! to Further Education Cuts
Clark's "reduce the deficit" phony austerity budget has
endless finances to pay the moneylenders, build roads,
power lines and bridges to provide infrastructure to mines, global gas
frackers and other big monopolies maximizing profits from ripping off
the people's
natural resources. Clark has just approved $116 million in royalty
credits for the Montney gas play to build infrastructure to maximize
Encana's profits.
Encana is the largest contributor to the Liberal Party war chest!
Imagine, Clark can hand over $116 million for Encana's gas bonanza, but
she refuses to
fund the approximately $35 million needed to finance the 3.5 per cent
salary increase of education workers, which does not even match the
loss those workers
have suffered to the rising cost of living over the past decade.
(No real estimates of the actual amount required to meet
this increase have been presented. If an average salary for an
education worker were $40,000
and if there were 20,000 Full Time Equivalent education workers (most
work part time), the total increase in salaries would be $1,652 per
employee over
the two year period or $33,040,000 for all 20,000.)
The Issues of Mandates and Funding
- Donna Petersen -
Who decides the
amount of funding necessary for
each school board
and how those funds should be raised?
In the early 2000s, centralized bargaining for the
entire BC Public Schools' K-12 Sector replaced local bargaining. The
Canadian Union of Public
Employees BC fought for it, partly because of the expense of bargaining
in all the small locals throughout the province. The problem is not the
centralized
structure of bargaining although that could be discussed, but the issue
of mandates, which includes the important issue of funding and the
realization of the
value created within the K-12 system, the value residing in the
educated people.
Throughout Canada, the issue is now on the table of how
the value created within the education sector should be realized. The
question has to be posed
why corporations, which use and consume the value put in graduates, are
not buying or paying for that socially produced value and putting it
back into the
education sector.
The BC government executive has taken all power into its
hands and dictates how much money should be allocated for K-12
education and how those
funds should be raised. The government even fires local elected school
trustees who insist on providing good public education in their
regions, which of
course requires increased investments in public education. The
government and the mass media refuse to discuss empowering people at
the local level, refuse
to discuss alternate methods of realizing the value of education and
refuse to discuss increasing investments in social programs. The
government has
unilaterally declared a phony austerity agenda including its
"cooperative savings mandate," which in reality is a process to wreck
public education through
a thousand cuts.
What is not tackled in this process is who decides these
'mandates.' It used to be that School Boards appropriated funds
directly from the taxpayer. Every
municipality or school board district decided by direct vote how much
the school board could commit. The provincial government, in the 1980s,
did away
with school board direct levies. Now all finances provided to the
school boards are decided by executive decree through the budget and
various mandates
such as the current 'cooperative savings mandate.' The result,
especially since the Liberals came to power in 2001, is that dozens of
schools have closed
and services to students have been dangerously reduced leading to the
most vulnerable dropping out. It is not even on the table to discuss
how corporations
ought to be paying for the education the workers they hire have
acquired at public expense. It is not on the government's austerity
agenda to increase
investments in public education. The working people have to take up all
these problems for discussion and solution as they affect them
directly. These
problems all concern the issue of who controls the decision-making
power and who it serves. The working people in BC cannot afford to let
the likes of
the Christy Clark government get away with taking decisions which
adversely affect their lives.
Government Turns Settlement
with Education Workers into
Another Attack
on K-12 Public Education
- Charles Boylan -
 Liberal Minister of
Education Peter Fassbender stated
bluntly that the government would not add one cent to the budgets of
BC's 60 school districts
regardless of the tentative settlement with education workers. Instead,
each of the 60 school boards (or appointed trustees) will have to
adjust their
budgets.
Fassbender's statement is consistent with the
government's neo-liberal pro-monopoly outlook towards public sector
workers. He is the third education
minister upholding the Clark government's "Co-operative Gains Mandate."
The mandate or dictate applies to all public sector
employers "whose agreements expire on or after December 31, 2011." One
of those employers is the
BC Public School Employers Association (BCPSEA). The BCPSEA alleges to
represent the 60 local employers of the 34,000 public K-12 school
employees.
Of those workers, 27,000 are represented by CUPE with the rest by the
International Union of Operating Engineers (IUOE). The new proposed
framework
agreement, which the government refuses to fund with even one penny,
was reached on September 18 between the BCPSEA and the two unions. The
new
contract follows the contract that expired on June 30, 2012.
The 60 school boards or trustees, which are the
employers in their respective school districts, have virtually no say
in how BCPSEA decides to negotiate.
The role of the individual boards is mostly to ratify or not ratify the
agreement. Similarly, all 63 union locals representing the workers in
the 60 districts
must individually ratify or not ratify the "general framework"
agreement negotiated on their behalf by the CUPE BC K-12 Provincial
Bargaining Sub-
Committee. But all that is dwarfed by the basic
incoherence of the situation. The two representative bodies have
reached an agreement but the principal
employer and keeper of all the funds, the Clark government, refuses to
recognize and fund the agreement.
The road to this incoherence, which effectively
marginalizes both the workers and the employers, stretches back several
decades. In the year 2000, NDP
Premier Dosanjh adopted Bill 7 ending a province-wide strike of
education workers. Bill 7 also appointed Vince Ready, a long-time BC
mediator/arbitrator
to head an Industrial Inquiry to rearrange employer-employee
negotiations with the aim to introduce the present highly centralized
arrangement.
At that time, Education Is a Right, a
pro-social advocate for K-12 public education, led opposition to the
amalgamation of all BC education
workers into one negotiation committee. Several large locals in the
Lower Mainland joined that opposition. However, CUPE BC, faced with
high cost
negotiations in the small communities outside the Lower Mainland,
pushed hard for a centralized negotiation committee.
Even though Vince Ready concluded that the basic
relationship between employer and employee was between the local board
and the union local in each
district, a centralized negotiation process between CUPE and IUOE and
BCPSEA evolved to produce a province-wide framework agreement. This
agreement
then comes back to the individual locals and boards to be ratified no
later than December 20 or it becomes null and void. The old "form" of
employer-employee relations remains intact in name only. In reality,
negotiations are a sham as the government dictates everything
beforehand through its
"Co-operative Gains Mandate."
Within this situation, the Campbell and Clark Liberal
governments have successively ripped up any collective agreements won
by teachers and health
care workers, which they do not like or which contravenes their
neo-liberal austerity agenda. And now, in another display of
dictatorial arrogance, Education
Minister Fassbender throws complete contempt on the present framework
agreement with education workers declaring the government will not
provide one
cent. This attack on education workers and the public education system
is not only a shameful display of brute dictatorial power; it is an
assault on thinking
and all thinking Canadians.
Note
Peter Fassbender is a former mayor of Langley.
Last April
his comment on the tragic death of a senior in a fire at a Langley
senior's residence was that
government could not afford to place sprinklers in all seniors' homes
built before the mid-90s because of cost. His remark that the Clark
government will
not increase investments in education by one penny is consistent with
the overall neo-liberal view that society, through government, has no
compelling
obligation to fulfill the rights of its members, whether seniors,
students, teachers or education workers.
School Trustees Face the Consequences
The unfunded "framework agreement" negotiated between
the BC Public School Employers Association (BCPSEA) and the Canadian
Union of Public
Employees BC K-12 Provincial Bargaining Sub-Committee poses serious
problems for the employers, the 60 school district boards and trustees,
as well as
education workers, students and their parents. The central problem is
the Cooperative Savings Mandate (CSM), which dictates no additional
funding for
education will be invested by the provincial government.
Cowichan School Board
Eden Haythornthwaite, former Chair, Cowichan School
Board (District 79) on Vancouver Island told BC
Worker the settlement will be used to further attack the quality
of K-12 education. She, together with all Board members were sacked
from their elected
positions by an edict dictated in June 2012 by then Education Minister,
George Abbott. The "crime" of the popular board was to submit to
Victoria, which
completely controls all K-12 funding, a "needs budget" instead of a
"balanced budget."
Haythornthwaite had experienced previous cuts imposed
through underfunding. The Liberal government imposed energy charges
against boards while
companies were given "green" tax write-offs, many of them fraudulent.
This was done in the name of "greening BC." Finally the majority of
Cowichan board
members agreed to submit a "needs budget"; they took a stand widely
supported in the community with demonstrations and a large public
meeting. Education
Minister Abbott simply replaced the elected board with one person, Mike
McKay, Superintendent of the Surrey Board, the largest board in BC with
80,000
students and staff. McKay then submitted the "balanced budget."
The government in Victoria exercises an effective and
intimidating dictatorship over school boards throughout the province.
The government cuts services
and programs to fit the Procrustean bed dictated by Victoria's budget.
If school boards do not agree, they can be replaced by ministerial
edict.
Haythornthwaite said were she still chair of the
Cowichan board, she like Patti Bacchus of the Vancouver School Board,
would be faced with either laying
off workers, cutting their hours or reducing programs and services for
the students. "The boards haven't had the power to raise finances for
over three
decades. Everything is dictated by Victoria. Industry and business is
provided high school educated youth as employees without themselves
having to make
any specific contribution for all the work done to educate those youth."
Haythornthwaite added, "School boards and the unions
must get united in opposition to the 'budget restraint' dictate of
Clark's so-called 'cooperative
savings mandate.' What kind of collective bargaining is it when the
union knows full well any wage increase obtained in their new agreement
will be paid
for by their own members?"
Haythornthwaite regrets that other boards never took a
stand in solidarity when the Cowichan board was arbitrarily removed
from office. She said in
the present circumstance what will the 60 boards do except be
intimidated to accept the unfunded framework agreement. "Divide and
rule, intimidate through
threats to knuckle under, this is the situation both education workers
and the entire public wanting to defend public education face with this
government",
she added.
She concluded, "The number one task is to build an
opposition to Clark's neo-liberal agenda, and the workers, like the
education, health care and other
public sector workers together with those in the private sector need to
head up that opposition. That a government dictated 'mandate' further
impoverishes
public education in BC must not pass."
Vancouver School Board
Patti Bacchus, chairperson of the nine-member Vancouver
Board of Education (VSB) told BC Worker that the unfunded
wage settlement would affect the
Vancouver Board by approximately $4-5 million. She added the Board
faces three possibilities:
lay off staff, cut the hours of staff or cut days of school
instruction. She said, "The premier keeps telling school boards to
'find efficiencies.' The days of
finding efficiencies in our budget have long gone. We were forced in
2003 by Clark, then education minister, to absorb the salary increase
awarded to BC
K-12 teachers. That meant a $25.5 million cut to the Vancouver Board,
and it has accumulated over the years to about $47 million. To cut
another $4 to
$5 million from our budget would be equivalent to laying off 40 to 50
school councillors or librarians."
Bacchus pointed out that $1 million equates to
approximately 14 full time teaching positions. The other alternative,
cutting school teaching days, has
already been implemented. "We save about $100,000 for every day cut
from the teaching calendar through less substitute teachers and other
factors." She
said to meet the unfunded $4-5 million increase of the proposed
contract by cutting 40 to 50 teaching days would be an absurdity. She
said that about 90 per cent of the board's budget is used to pay
salaries. The effect on
the budget of any settlement with education workers, who are mostly
education assistants
as well as secretaries, janitors etc, is great.
Letters to the Editor
Clark's Pay-the-Rich Program
Clark can pay the rich, but cannot pay hard working
education support workers to help provide basic
education in clean well-maintained schools with safe transportation for
our youth. The government refuses even to provide some nutrition in
lunch programs
for children living in poverty, while BC has the shameful distinction
of having the second highest per capita child impoverishment in Canada.
Clark cries
"jobs, jobs, jobs." What about education workers' jobs?! Cutting jobs
in education, health care and other essential social programs to fit a
phony austerity
agenda is not "jobs, jobs, jobs." It is retrogression and an attack on
workers and society and it must not pass!
Province-Wide Bargaining Has Become a Farce
Education workers and school boards must say no to a
contract that does not compel the
provincial government to increase its investment in K-12 public
education. Province-wide bargaining has become a farce, a weapon
against public education.
Education workers and their allies can turn this around, if they force
the provincial treasury to finance the framework agreement and not
throw mud on it
as the government is now doing. Now is the time to stand up and say NO!
For Your Information
BC Government's Cooperative Gains Mandate
According to the government, the Cooperative Gains
Mandate (CGM), "Provides public sector employers with the ability to
negotiate modest wage
increases made possible by productivity increases within existing
budgets (our emphasis -- BC Worker)."
CGM holds out differentiated settlements throughout the
public sector, but all will depend, "particularly [on] the ability to generate
savings
to fund modest compensation improvements (our emphasis)."[1]
A review of the ten neo-liberal "principles" comprising
the CGM makes clear how irrationality and retrogression arise when
thinking is controlled by
dogma.
First principle: "The province will not provide
additional funding for increases to compensation negotiated in
collective bargaining."
Second: Ministries and bargaining agents are
directed "to develop Savings Plans to free up funding from within
existing budgets to provide
modest compensation increases."
Third: "Employers must not reduce service levels
to the public" to pay workers.
Fourth: "Employers must not transfer the costs of
existing services to the public."
Fifth: Savings can be made "from operational cost
reductions, increased efficiency, service redesign, business gains, and
other initiatives."
Sixth: These "identified savings" are to fund
"compensation increases" in "negotiated settlements with unions through
collective bargaining."
Seventh: These "savings must be real, measurable,
and incremental to savings identified by Employers to meet
Provincial Budget and
deficit reduction targets for 2012/13 and beyond."
Eight: "Employers and unions may also negotiate
other savings at the bargaining table to supplement Savings Plans." (For
example,
sell
public
assets
for cash -- BC Worker)
Nine: There is no "target wage increase" but
increases "are expected to be modest and employers must have an
approved Bargaining Plan
from government (our emphasis)."
Ten: Agreements must be "at least two years in
length" with "no maximum term."
Note
1. Ministry of Finance,
http://www.fin.gov.bc.ca/psec/bargaining
Explanation and Discussion of
"Provincial Framework
Agreement"
The "Framework Agreement" (FA) is a contract proposal
covering salary and a number of other items. The FA now goes for
approval or not to sixty
employers, the school trustees in sixty school districts, and over
sixty trade union locals with some 34,000 members, 27,000 of whom are
CUPE members.
The deadline for boards and union locals to adopt the FA is December
20, 2013. Aside from the issue that the Clark government refuses to
provide funds
to school districts to pay for any changes in the FA, the agreement
itself raises issues of concern for education workers.
The FA has eight parts. First,
the term goes from July
1, 2012 to June 30, 2014. Second,
wage increases total 3.5 per cent
starting
with 1 per cent on July 1, 2013,
2 per cent on February 1, 2014, and 0.5 per cent on May 1, 2014.
Part 3 deals
with the Support Staff Education and
Adjustment Committee. This committee was established in the 2006 FA. A
onetime grant of a
maximum of $3 million was allotted by the government. "These monies
will be used to support skills training, retraining, or professional
enhancement for
support staff employees." In the present agreement, an opening is made
for "b) a study of the potential for regionalization of wages." Workers
might be
concerned that this is a wedge in the door to introduce two or
multi-tier wages throughout the province. Another concern is "c) an
exploration of the potential
for a standardized extended health and dental benefit plan." The
concern is that workers with progressive boards that have generous
benefit plans may be
forced to reduce them, as part of a move to "standardize." Similarly
with d), which addresses "hours of work and service delivery," the
concern arises that
this will become another avenue to whittle away workers' employment
time. There is also a proposed review of districts that have "modified
school calendars"
and the "resulting impact on support staff."
Part 4 is
entitled "Recognition & Respect for
Education Assistants." This has to do with standardizing education
support workers in the schools. These
workers assist the teachers by providing support for special needs
students, being with students on the playground and otherwise assisting
the children make
progress. The Committee is charged in this FA to engage the Ministry of
Education around "the implementation of a system of recognized
credentials and
qualifications to regulate the employment of Education Assistants." At
present, support workers in different districts go by different names
and have different
qualifications and tasks. The plan is to standardize this job category
throughout the province through legislation. This work is to be
completed by the next
round of bargaining.
Part 5 is
"Illness and Injury Leave, Costs and
Replacement Policies." This matter is of serious concern to education
workers. There was considerable
pressure from BCPSEA negotiators to "reduce the costs" of sick leave.
Under this FA there was no reduction of sick leave benefits but the
door was opened
to "investigate the use and cost of sick leave and Board staff
replacement policies with a view to recommending best practices to the
parties and the PEBT"
(Public Education Benefits Trust). This trust provides for long-term
disability benefits for workers suffering serious injury or ill-health.
It was established
with an $11 million grant by the government under Bill 7 in 2000, when
striking education workers were legislated back to work by NDP Premier
Ujjal
Dosanjh. The plan now provides 60 per cent of the worker's salary but
only
after being off work for 120 calendar days. At the present time, sick
days are
cumulative. In some districts, employees gain 1.5 sick days per month
for 10 months. The efforts of the BCPSEA to reduce sick days or prevent
their
accumulation is an important issue for workers because they must
accumulate between 80 and 90 sick days to tide them through to payments
from long term
disability (120 calendar days) should they become seriously ill or
suffer a serious accident.
Part 6. Drug
Plan. This section seeks to lift up those
districts without an advanced drug plan to "move towards this new
provincial standard."
Part 7 has to do
with Letters of Understanding, which
include setting aside $100,000 for the next round of provincial
bargaining, and to continue Letters
of Understanding with regard to "the Settlors Statement on Accepted
Policy and Practices of the PEBT as contained in the 2011 Letter of
Understanding"
which will be attached to the local agreement.
Part 8 also
causes serious concern to education workers.
It states, "The Parties and representatives of the Ministry of
Education will examine and discuss
any impediments arising from, and the options to facilitate, the
introduction of shared services." Shared services would allow various
districts to pool certain
functions, for example maintenance, secretarial work, IT and so on. The
problem this poses for the workers is that it opens space for
privatization of this
work to outside contractors. The argument will be used that this
"saves" money, which plays into Clark's assault on public education and
the "cooperative
gains mandate." Outsourcing reduces available work for unionized
employees resulting in loss of work for public workers, and downward
pressure on wages,
benefits and conditions of work, as those employed by contract
companies are generally not organized.
The "Provincial Framework Agreement" was signed off by
Peter Cameron for BCPSEA and Bill Pegler of CUPE.
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