Lessons from the BC teachers strike
By Harold Lavender
Four hundred thousand BC teachers staged an illegal two-week strike in October 2005, in defiance of the BC Liberal government. What lessons can be learned to advance workers’ struggles in BC? In November, Left Turn organized a panel of four union activists, Lisa Descary of the BC Teachers’ Federation, Will Offley of the BC Nurses’ Union, Gretchen Dulmage of the Hospital Employees’ Union, and Laurence Boxall of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union.
Will Offley described the outcome of the teachers strike as “a tie but what a tie.” He noted the teachers had seized the right to strike, saying, “you are not given the right to strike. You take the right to strike. And in so doing the BCTF has profoundly transformed the political situation in BC.”
The Liberals were unable to crush the BCTF. Instead, in December 2005 they announced a U-turn in public sector bargaining tactics.
Finance Minister Carole Taylor announced there was a $6 billion pot for public sector wage increases. Ninety per cent of public sector contracts in BC expire March 31, 2006. Taylor offered substantial bonuses for signing early and for signing contracts that don’t expire until 2010 (after the Olympics).
Teachers won a partial victory
Lisa Descary, a teacher in Richmond, is her school staff union rep and was elected as a BCTF delegate to the convention of the BC Federation of Labour. Why, she asked, was the BCTF able to pull off at least a partial victory when other unions have not?
“If you asked me at the beginning of September whether my staff would go out on an illegal strike with no strike pay and be totally solid, I would have said not on your life.” The situation, she said, was repeated across the province.
Indeed, a lot of teachers made surprisingly leaps during the strike, she noted. A middle-aged female teacher, a first-generation Canadian married to a businessman, told Lisa after 48 hours, “What we really need is a general strike. That would solve the problem.” Another teacher who grew up in Shaughnessy (a very wealthy area of Vancouver) confided, “We need to stay out three months. That would do it.”
According to Lisa, the teachers went on strike for three things. This included (1) staffing levels and working conditions stripped away by the Liberals; (2) bargaining rights (teachers had been declared an essential service by the BC Liberals); and (3) a fair salary hike.
“We didn’t really win any of those things. Initially, some of us didn’t think this was a victory,” Lisa admitted. But “What made the strike really positive was the unity of the teachers.” For a lot of teachers it was victory because they were in a “morally justified struggle” to defend public education.
Part of the reason for the BCTF’s achievement, Lisa mentioned, has to do with the democratic nature of the BCTF. Since 1978, a Left caucus in the BCTF called Teacher’s Viewpoint has sought to make the BCTF a grassroots federation that listens to the voice of individual teachers in local unions. “I believe we are pretty much that way today,” Lisa said.
She pointed out that a pre-strike vote allowed teachers to vote on whether to return to work and not allow the executive to make that decision.
“We expect that type of democracy. A lot of us were shocked when we joined the BC Federation of Labour. Delegates are bound at convention and can’t vote their conscience. And there is not the kind of free and open debate we have come to expect. The BCTF has democratic culture and in keeping with that culture we elected a leader [BCTF President Ginnie Sims] who is very focused on democracy… She could not just go ahead and sell us out – not that she would. Some people were expecting Ginnie Sims would be forced to make a backroom deal. She actually said to me, ‘It was difficult to stand up to the pressure.’”
What is next? In the spring, the teachers’ CUPE colleagues (non-teaching school employees, who refused to cross teachers’ picket lines) could be out again. Lisa says she believes teachers will honour CUPE pickets, even though the strike cost them $2,000 to $3,000 last time with no concrete gains.
Health workers exec cut a deal
Gretchen Dulmage, vice-chair of the Health Employees’ Union local at Women’s and Children’s Hospital and a member of Solidarity Caucus, compared her experiences in the 2004 HEU strike. 43,000 health care workers were legislated back to work after four days of picketing, but continued to strike until the union executive cut a deal [under pressure from the BC Fed leaders], which was, Gretchen says, “way worse than the deal we had rejected a year earlier.”
The union avoided putting the deal to a vote of the membership saying it was not a contract negotiation or a strike, but an illegal protest and negotiations with the government over legislation.
She asked, “Why did they settle for a deal that was so bad?” Labour leaders were not ready for the BC Liberals’ no-holds-barred efforts to break the power of unions, and the public sector unions in particular, she said. This, “after we had put ourselves on the line, said we were ready to go to jail and lose out jobs.”
Today, Gretchen sees something more heartening. “I saw something different with the teachers. Ginnie Sims stayed out for far longer under [the government’s] pressure than our leaders. She insisted there was going to be a vote, and the membership – and nobody else – decides.”
The HEU contract is up on March 31. Gretchen feels that members are quite determined. “We are really indebted to BCTF members for standing firm. It shows you can push a little further.” Gretchen emphasized that “the only weapon workers have to win their demands is the strike, and if unions forget that, we are in deep trouble.”
CEP union member Laurence Boxall described the teachers strike as “the most exciting incidence of class war I have ever experienced inside Canada or South Africa.” Teachers told him, “I don’t like to do stuff that is illegal. But I have no choice. I owe it to my students.”
This time, the role of the labour leadership was “transparent.” BC Fed president Jim Sinclair went on the media talking about a teachers’ pact to return to work before the BCTF had even heard about it.
What needs to be done? According to Laurence, “We need to build to build a rank and file movement… We need to change both the structure and leadership of the BC Fed” and heal the rift between union and community from the betrayal of Solidarity in 1983, as well as fight privatization at all levels. Stressing that the power of solidarity is the main tool of struggle, he called on unions to join March 18 protests against the war in Iraq.
Transforming the union movement
Will Offley said he was speaking for himself not the BCNU, although he hopes to convince the union of his positions. “The process of transforming the Fed and ending the string of betrayals that have taken place over the last number of years is an organic process.”
Will argued it was not just a problem of a clique at the top but “a social layer, tightly interconnected, aware of and defensive of its own interests… Those of us who are active in our unions need to look at the transformation of each of our unions as a necessary step by which the Fed begins to change.”
What accounted for the difference in the outcome of the teachers’ and HEU strikes, and the difference in the morale in the labour movement after the strikes?
Will pointed to the unity of the teachers, which catalyzed an immense degree of support among the population as a whole and among other unionists.
He also said it was a “textbook case” of a union being transformed in two weeks of struggle, with members’ consciousness being permanently changed.
For Will, “the strike was a just cause.” He said the teachers’ demands in terms of working conditions and maintenance of public education made it possible to win the support of the majority of the population of BC. “Teachers were not seen as greedy public sector workers holding the public to ransom but as defenders of our children and our future.”
He said, “We need to find a way to fuse our demands of working conditions, benefits and wages with the need to deliver the public services that the population of BC needs.” He added, “We saw the unity that came from the democratic organizing of the BCTF and democratic control of the membership.”
Will pointed to the role of grassroots activists. In Victoria, the Community Solidarity Coalition shut down much of the city to support teachers. “They were the ones who knew the work sites, the shift times, the entrances. The Fed had to ask them for information. The Fed didn’t know how to do it. They were the backbone of the action. We need to take this into account in our organizing, whether we are union members or not.”
