Teachers vote down proposed deal, strike action imminent in Alberta
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Summary
Teachers in Alberta are on strike and parents are on the hook to pay for daycare and child care. How do you deal with a teacher strike? What are your thoughts on the situation and how should parents be handling it?
Transcript
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all right well so locally we've got the teachers are are uh revolting uh you know berta it looks
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like they may be going on strike as soon as this monday and uh parents are on the hook i think we
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might be in for the long haul for a bit let me just give you some numbers uh to chew over uh
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they were offered a 12 raise over four years uh teachers with uh five years education and five
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years in classroom experience would be making well over a hundred thousand dollars for 10 months uh
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work uh the deal included uh 1500 new educational assistants 3000 new teachers uh to go along with
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8.6 billion dollars in new school construction and alberta teachers rejected that by uh 89.5
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percent uh they're angry and they've had enough and they're gonna likely go on strike on monday
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to help parents they're gonna get 30 a day to pay for daycare or whatever else they have to do with
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their kids 150 bucks a week and that money is going to come from the teachers what would have been their
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salaries but they're not getting them anymore uh they're not getting paid while they're on strike
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so that money is going to uh families and there's going to be uh online courses that parents can get
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the uh the teachers uh going on but if i was a betting man i'd say uh it's going to last a while this
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strike yeah i did again i i don't think that i think the premier is laying down a
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reputation as a hardliner on everything that she touches um what we've just been talking about with
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the pipelines is actually a pretty hard line response notwithstanding some of corey's reservations
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uh she's taken pretty strong positions on some of the fringe areas around the education act with the
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with the pornographic textbooks and the and in terms of the transgender stuff she's been very firm
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wait till you're 18 wait till you're adult so she is not afraid unlike some premiers she does not
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just sort of see which way the wind is blowing she's got her ideas she puts it out there and my
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sense is that she's not going to like this and she will fight them you're right this could go on for
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a while i'm liking where she's going already again preparing parents trying to do what she can she's
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already basically signaling to the teachers too we're not going to flip and settle overnight guys you
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rejected a good offer we're going to starve you out a little bit here uh elise i mean you know bc and
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unions boy that's certainly an area and few things put chills into the spine of a politician more than
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than dealing with a teacher strike of all things when you have a bunch of upset parents and and uh
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pressure put on things but uh do you think premier smiths can be able to weather this storm
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i i think so i if i could give a little advice i was uh i'm a former spinner for the gordon campbell
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government um and a little bit of the christy cart government um and i'll say i there were years where it
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was just rolling strikes my child was caught in years of strike action from kindergarten all the
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way through to grade six um and i regret not pulling my child out and putting her in the public or private
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system i would say that we've gone through some heavy duty strikes here um and i would say that you
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must hold the line um what i can't understand i looked at the offer that the alberta teachers uh were
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was put on the table by the government and i compared it to what bc's last offer was and that
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in bc the bctf contract um actually expires next spring uh so we don't have that long but i would
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say that alberta teachers are far far ahead than almost every teaching federation or association in
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the country i think the sticking point and i think there's more to this as well they didn't like the book
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ban um they're they've got membership and they're much like the bctf and maybe more so at the bctf
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that's quite militant in its approach um they didn't like being told what type of books they should read
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what the what type of literature and conversation they should be having with their students i think
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there's some of that at play at play as well and they want to push her and this is a bit of a revenge
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thing quite a thing as well but i would say that it i understand some of the parts that the alberta
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teachers are complaining about which is really a federal problem it has a lot to do with class size
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caps and that was a sticking feature and has been for almost 12 years in british columbia
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each province is seeing almost about a 10 percent uh growth in their classrooms that's a lot for
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teachers and every child now seems to have an issue and without the special needs of special
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education attached to that or aid workers uh the deal really isn't going to get done so my advice
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to the alberta government is fixate on that demonstrate to the public that you're coming to
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the table because there is a lot of parental support i was surprised there's a lot of parental
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support in alberta for the teachers but it's sticking on this issue um and i think that you can bring
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kids back to the classroom the way that we did once we finally in the third iteration of these strikes
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we relented and we were able to look at class size caps and also the addition of more aid workers i will
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say cringer smith has almost come to fully to the table on that it's just there's a few numbers there
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that need to be worked out i think it's interesting what you're saying there about parental support
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for the teachers what matters i yes well i i have a few people in the friends in the in the teaching
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profession who say that there is a hate on in the teaching profession for the smith government they
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don't they just it doesn't i'm not sure what a good deal could have looked like which would have got
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past that they just don't like the idea that somebody else not just teachers somebody else
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has got some firm ideas on how children should be taught and what they should be taught i mean you
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mentioned the books just now and i mentioned them earlier too when you look at what we've got there
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like you would have been put in prison 20 years ago if you don't offer that stuff in a school
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so i have to say that if parents are supporting that well um my sympathies are somewhat diminished
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you look on monday monday teachers are without paying right there there is no strike fund for
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for to pay the strikers you know you normally if you show up on picket line duty you get you get a
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daily stipend there is no money for that for teachers so cory you talked about starving them out
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as of monday if they go on strike teachers have no income and i mean they gotta you know pay for the
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summer cottage for their two months off somehow yes and their christmas vacations and the november
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vacation that was family day long weekend arbor day yes uh you name it on these wretched radio
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ads that we keep hearing i don't know it it makes me where'd all those union dues go it makes me
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question how financially secure the the union is if they can't afford strike pay but that said there
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is 51 000 of them right i would i would remind you guys and i would remind the teachers that it's
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caught it's public knowledge at the at our fingertips just to google search the bctf and the alberta
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teachers and the quebec teachers and the ontario teachers and ontario is an even bigger mess they
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have never met a government that they can do business with and it's been proven with the ndp the
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successive governments in british columbia the ndp governments from the original you know glenn clark
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governments all the way to david edie it's not just right of center or um you know conservative
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governments for example they like to play that narrative as the big meanie you know they're
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right-wing fascist they want to crush us well i would look at the comments they made about rachel
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knotley uh when they were in their negotiations they were hard liners then they didn't like her then
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they didn't they don't like david edie they didn't like john horrigan um so this is more about ideology
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it's a militant ideology and unfortunately i don't think it represents like the postal workers and i've
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talked to many bc teachers for example it they're frustrated by these militant union leaders um that
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get ahead and get elected and what we noticed is that if we gave them enough rope they would not swing
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but you know they would the house the cards would fall down and they eventually do turn on each
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other and that's when you have to come back in and say okay we're going to come to the table we
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understand the capping of class size and i will say the capping of class size is a pretty antiquated
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um thing to to stand you hold your ground on and it's about it's 10 years old we've all all the
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governments have thought about this you eventually have to relent because it is an immigration issue and
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with immigration has come some serious socioeconomic problems that we are just not prepared and
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unfortunately the front line is the classroom and our healthcare system you know alice i think we have
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to remember that there are some really good people in the teaching profession there are there are and
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however only 11 voted in for the deal and i i wonder if that gives you some idea of the proportion of
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of the you've got to own it when it's a vote i mean so the rhetoric too as you're talking about
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with ideology and so on i was mentioned there with with uh our creepy senator wells uh calling
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premier smith the dictator yes um which is kind of ironic considering at least she was elected he
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was appointed so if anybody's more of a dictator it would be that strange little man but he's really
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torquing this sort of thing i mean we've got a senator stepping between and getting in the way between a
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provincial and uh uh you know a school uh strike going on like this is going to get ugly yeah it's
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none of his business really um and you're right he is creepy and uh you're right the rhetoric needs
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to be toned down uh and it's only going to get worse until monday well the other aspect too and
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we've talked about that a lot we've had you know john hilton o'brien speak of it uh if anything's going
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to help parents start to reconsider keeping their kids in the regular public system it's when the
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teachers do things like this the teachers union despises the thought of more charter schools or
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private schools or homeschooling but it's just this sort of thing that makes parents realize that maybe
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i like those options better yep you can see charter school enrollment booming next year yeah it happened
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in bernish columbia the public private schools and uh what you guys call charter schools
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completely boomed and it's maintained and it's growing in british columbia because like canada
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post bc's education education system became extremely unreliable i'm not joking when i say it was six
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school years of rotating strikes black armbands as well uh the teachers were wearing black armbands
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dressed all in black it horrified the children it was a horrible time in our province but
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private schools other types of schools have done nothing but extremely well in this province