BCTF launches twitter info stream on themes of labour dispute

As the pace of talks in the British Columbia Education negotiations reach the glacial stage and the participants mark the passing of a one year anniversary, the BC Teachers Federation spent a bit of time on twitter last night, providing for a stream of talking points and notes on the status of the negotiations.

As part of their review of the state of affairs, the teachers' representatives advised that mediation continues on, as well as the Federation's work towards a contingency plan.

The contingency plan would appear to be preparations towards some form of job action that would be designed to put pressure on the government side to bring an end to the year long contract negotiations with a successful outcome.

The trail of tweets begins below:

In addition to the flow of talking points, the BCTF also took note of an ongoing petition campaign to put pressure on the BC NDP to bring some constructive plans towards the education funding gap to the table.

"BC teachers need your help. After a year of negotiations, we are still without a deal that will help address our working conditions, which are also our students’ learning conditions. The biggest obstacle to progress is the government’s refusal to address BC’s funding gap." -- From the introduction to a change.org petition drive on BC education

You can review more of the petition here, to this point the initiative has collected over 4,000 names.

For its part, the British Columbia Public School Employers' Association has not released any public updates since December, with no new entries to their information streams.

BC Education Minister
Rob Fleming

Likewise, Education Minister Rob Fleming has been keeping a fairly low profile on the state of discussions, with few public statements of note in recent weeks.

In the Prince Rupert School District, as we outlined last month, after a flurry of letters exchanged in the fall and an occasional information line at the Ocean Centre office for MLA Jennifer Rice, the local teachers and the MLA have not had much in the way of engagement on the theme of labour issues in recent months.

As the next steps come along, you can keep up to date on the status of the contract talks from our political blog D'Arcy McGee, as well as our Education negotiations archive page, which has charted the latest notes when the two sides had something to say.

Other items of interest on Education on the North Coast can be found from our Education archive, while items related to the provincial government can be explored through our Legislature archive.

Cross posted from the North Coast Review.