One of the greatest signs ever created was inspired by a labour dispute between teachers and their employers back in the late 1980s.
The dispute was minor and didn't last long, but a few of my fellow students took the dispute seriously.
While the teachers picketed outside the school, a small group of anti-union minded students set up shop across Buckley Avenue from Howe Sound Secondary.
The students had a sign that had "Teachers - Cry me a river and I'll build you a dam with non-union labour" written on it.Labour disputes involving teachers always take me back to that sign.
We now have a classic battle between a right of centre provincial government and 42,000 union members.
The province is insisting there won't be any raises in the first two years of the deal and the teachers don't like it. On the other hand, the teachers want to negotiate class size limits and other working condition issues, but legislation brought into law by the B.C. Liberals prevents such issues from being discussed as part of contract negotiations.
Left and right are clashing in what is turning out to be a philosophical dispute with significant potential implications for students from Kindergarten to Grade 12.
The sides had the whole summer to sort through their differences. Instead of rolling up their sleeves and getting down to business, they spent the summer in isolation.
The B.C. Public School Employers' Association (BCPSEA) and the B.C. Teachers' Federation met on June 21 and then agreed to meet next on Aug. 22.
The employer and the union leaders couldn't have been thinking about the kids around B.C. when they decided to spend the whole summer navel gazing. The sides knew they were far apart and should have known that if the differences were to be resolved, they needed to set an aggressive schedule to work through things.
Now students and their parents are purchasing school supplies, firming up daycare and travel plans with a potential school disruption hanging like a dark storm cloud over schools from Valleycliffe to Valemont and beyond.
Now that an entire summer is gone, there is no sense dwelling on the bargaining time lost. Education Minister Shirley Bond needs to closely monitor the dispute and both sides need to make a commitment to the kids of this province by hammering out a new collective agreement as soon as possible.
Whether you think like my former schoolmates or not, you have to agree that adults who wasted the summer now need to get serious about the task ahead without causing any class time to be lost.
