VANCOUVER -- After more than a year of bargaining, the union representing B.C. teachers says it has reached a tentative agreement in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis.
The B.C. Teachers' Federation announced Thursday it has struck a deal with the B.C. Public School Employers' Association following "several days of marathon negotiation sessions this week."
The terms of the deal have not been made public, and the agreement still has to be ratified by the union's roughly 45,000 members.
"Given the current circumstances with COVID-19, our ratification vote will be different this time around," the union said on Twitter. "We are already working on what that will look like."
The union said an email containing details of the deal was sent to members on Thursday afternoon, but that it could take a few hours to reach all of them.
Negotiations between the teachers and their employer began back in February 2019, and their contract expired last June. A mediator was assigned to help move the bargaining along over the summer, but the BCTF said as recently as last month that there had not been much progress.
