The B.C. teachers’ union has announced it will hold a strike vote next week to pressure the government into negotiating a new contract.
The strike vote, which will take place March 4 to 6, comes as part of the ongoing fallout from a Supreme Court decision released in January that ruled the provincial government had negotiated in bad faith and attempted to provoke a strike in 2011.
“For teachers, our only recourse in response to the unfair, unreasonable, and deliberately confrontational proposals at this point is to apply pressure through a strike vote,” said Jim Iker, the president of the BC Teachers’ Federation, in a written statement.
Results of the strike vote will be announced on March 6. Once the vote is taken, the union has 90 days to activate it with some sort of job action.
The union said initial action will not include school closures or stoppage of extracurricular activities and will not affect report cards.
