The B.C. government rejected the British Columbia Teachers' Federation's call for binding arbitration Saturday evening.
Following a recommendation from the BC Public School Employers’ Association’s chief negotiator Peter Cameron, Minister of Education Peter Fassbender rejected the call from the teachers’ union.
In a statement Fassbender said the call for arbitration was “another empty effort to give parents and teachers a false hope that there is a simple way to resolve the dispute.”
Fassbender said that the BCTF had not given BCPSEA a written proposal and it was clear that significant preconditions would “tilt the entire process in the BCTF favour”.
In a statement BCTF president Jim Iker said the teachers’ proposal is a “straightforward and practical solution.”
“It would have seen the most contentious issue, the government's attempt to nullify their BC Supreme Court losses, removed from the bargaining process,” Iker said. “All other matters, including compensation, could have gone to binding arbitration. B.C. teachers' only precondition was that the government's attempt to undo their court losses, proposal E80, be dropped.”
“B.C. teachers are willing to put our proposals to an independent third party for evaluation, but the government remains too entrenched to even consider this fair process,” Iker said.
The teachers union also took to Twitter saying that the government’s “road blocks and delay tactics need to come to an end.”
Since the union asked for the right to bring the arbitration to a vote, the arbitration would not be binding.
“It is unfortunate that as teachers continue to propose solutions to resolve the current disputes, government remains inflexible,” read another tweet from BCTF.
Both sides are still far apart on many aspects of the contract including wages and benefits as well as class size and composition issues.
Iker said the teachers will keep the arbitration and mediation options open while Fassbender said the dispute must be settled at the bargaining table.
