A full-scale walkout nine days before the end of the school year threatens to create financial and organizational havoc for Burnaby teachers, but they say the sacrifice would be worth it.
“I feel like I’m witnessing something big,” Cariboo Hill Secondary French teacher Sarah Winter said. “I feel like we’re at a point where this is the whole public education system that’s at risk, and I feel like we have to take a stand.”
That being said, Winter has yet to look at her pay stub this week to see how rotating strikes and the government’s 10 per cent pay deduction for the teachers’ job action will affect her income.
“Everybody else is talking about it,” she said. “I’m kind of afraid to look at mine.”
Like all new teachers without a continuing contract, she doesn’t have the option of stretching an annual salary over 12 months, so summers are lean, and a walkout won’t help matters.
“I would be lying if I said that it’s not going to be difficult financially,” Winter said. “I think all teachers are feeling the same way, but at the same time I think we’re feeling like it’s worth it in the end.”
Teachers around the province voted 86 per cent Monday and Tuesday in favour of a full-scale strike.
The B.C. Teachers’ Federation told its members in an email Wednesday night it was serving three working days notice for a full strike beginning Tuesday.
The union has already said it won’t be able to offer teachers their $50-a-day strike pay after this week.
“I live paycheque to paycheque,” fine arts teacher Joan MacLean told the NOW. “I got my pay statement last night, and it’s quite a bit less than I normally get, so I can’t pay my bills. That’ll be the hardest part.”
And financial hardship won’t be the only challenge teacher will face if the walkout goes ahead, according to MacLean’s Cariboo Hill colleagues picketing during a rotating strike Wednesday.
“There’s just so much year-end stuff to deal with as a teacher,” music teacher Kyle Axford told the NOW, “and it gets really, really tricky to try and do all of those things at the end of the year, and now if there is a walkout on the Monday, then it’s going to mean that all that stuff is going to have to be done by Friday.”
He said he doesn’t see how teachers who are moving to new schools will be able to get ready for next year.
“I think it’s going to be a real struggle to make sure that everything is organized and prepped and ready to go for September,” he said.
But Axford and his fellow Cariboo Hill teachers appeared unanimous in their support of a walkout if that’s what their union decides is necessary to pressure the province.
“At the end of the day, the government has the hammer if they choose to use it,” science teacher Adam Taylor said, “but that doesn’t mean we should stop fighting for a better education system.”
Home economics teacher Jayne Roberts agreed.
“It’s not something we choose lightly,” she said. “It’s years of frustration. I feel like the government has walked into my classroom and personally spit in my face. I really don’t think that they know what we do.”
If a full-scale walkout does go ahead, the province has said report cards would still be issued – possibly in abbreviated form – and provincial exams would still be administered and graded.
Provincial negotiators will argue in front of the Labour Relations Board Wednesday night to have exams and report cards designated an essential service.
A notice posted on the Burnaby school district website, meanwhile, states the district will send out a letter this week about report cards, provincial exams and end of year procedures.
