Intercepts
A listening post monitoring public education and teachers’ unions.

Click here to read:

1) California’s Real Retention Problem
2) Covering Teachers Unions: Close But Not a Full Cigar
3) The New Charter School Math
4) Short Bites
5) Arbitration to Delay Armageddon
6) Last Week’s Intercepts
7) Quotes of the Week

The British Columbia Teachers Federation thinks workers should be satisfied with their salaries and should not strike and interfere with the business of their employers – at least when they work on the staff of the British Columbia Teachers Federation. The union’s own employees are on the picket line, protesting unfair treatment by their bosses.

Once again demonstrating that unions have no sense of irony when it comes to labor relations, BCTF officials petitioned the Labour Board bar their employees from picketing in front of the union’s annual convention, which will be held May 4 in Vancouver.

The union claims the workers should only be allowed to picket their place of employment, and not the convention hall, where the union is doing business. Got that?

Forty-one professional staffers of the British Columbia Teachers Federation went on strike yesterday, accusing their employers of “contract stripping” and concession demands. BCTF staffers are members of Local 464 of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union.

The teachers’ union support staff is not on strike, but is honoring the picket line, prompting BCTF managers to close the union’s offices in Vancouver. Even the BCTF web site is down.

For its part, the teachers’ union claims its staff is already well taken care of.

“Our CEP professional staff does an excellent job and the compensation and benefits they receive from our members’ dues are excellent also,” said BCTF President Jinny Sims. “But BCTF members do not believe that professionals who would receive an average wage of $100,000 by the end of this proposed contract are hard done by and need to strike to get even more.”

Sims also noted that the staff “receive benefits no BCTF member has, such as a gratuity of 50% of one year’s salary upon retirement after only 10 years service,” and that the “wage gap between CEP professional staff and teachers has grown too large.” Teachers in British Columbia average about $63,000.

BCTF has asked CEP Local 464 members to give up compensatory time for occasional work done in the evening. “Professionals in all lines of work who make significant salaries are occasionally required to conduct evening work and we are asking the CEP professional staff to do the same,” Sims said.

The staff union plans to picket the union’s annual convention, scheduled for May 4 after being postponed under previous threat of picketing.

“Our members are coming to Vancouver from across the province to exercise their rights in a democratic union,” Sims said. “The membership’s business is important and we strongly believe the staff should not be attempting to pressure the members through an unwarranted expansion of their strike.”

If you’re anywhere near the William E. Durr branch public library in Kenton County, Kentucky, tomorrow night at 7, stop in for what I’m sure will be a real treat: Bootsy Collins reading Dr. Seuss’ And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street.

Y’all ready to give up the funk?

If you thought yesterday’s New York City rubber room story was fascinating in a train-wreck sort of way, don’t miss Norm Scott’s account of the emergency Delegate Assembly of NYC’s United Federation of Teachers held last Tuesday.

By the way, Five Boroughs Productions is making a film about the rubber rooms. I couldn’t get the site to load past 81%, but maybe you’ll have better luck at http://www.rubberroommovie.com.