To the editor:
Re: “B.C. teachers approve six-year collective agreement,” online only.
I woke up Friday to two strong votes to maintain the status quo. I refer to Scotland rejecting independence and B.C. teachers voting to return to work with worse conditions than when they began their strike in the spring. Both events clearly show that while people are increasingly feeling discontented and desirous of change, they are prevented from acting decisively by fear and lack of imagination as a result of a mystification of thinking which collapses what are essentially socio-economic (and hence, changeable) limits into natural, immutable laws.
While I appreciate the exhausting work of Jim Iker in standing up to an unresponsive, ideologically-driven and autocratic neoliberal government for so long, his total capitulation in accepting an offer which doesn’t include one iota of concession from the government and which leaves teachers worse off then when they began the strike shows a startling lack of imagination. If the government is unwilling to budge and cites economic reasons for this, then maybe we need to think about overcoming this limit; it is after all, one that humans — people of this province — created by voting in this government. It is as such, not beyond the agency of the people to change.
How could this be done in the context of the teachers’ strike? Walk away from the negotiating table if the government is inflexible. Return to work if you need to replenish the coffers — both on the BCTF and that of individual teachers’ families in order to prepare for another strike. Better yet, call on the other public sector unions to join teachers in a general strike. I guarantee that a general strike would not be long in leading to the ouster of this government, especially with public opinion on the side of the teachers and a movement for a recall already sprouting in social media. But instead, we have Iker and his advisors believing the line that the intransigence of the government constitutes a natural and insuperable limit and the teachers, in their “yes” vote, going along with it. So the status quo of corporate-controlled neoliberal dismantling of the state and public services against the will of the people continues. Things will never change.
Alex Charron,
Victoria
