Friday, June 09, 2006

BREAKING NEWS - BCTF Votes to Strike

21 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

so if only 57% of the membership voted and then 85% of that lot voted for a strike, then the headline is

LESS THAN 50% of TEACHERS SUPPORT A STRIKE

Friday, June 09, 2006 11:14:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The count was 25698 voted to strike, the number of teachers is 30,202. Doesn't look like 57 percent to me but then again I don't sort of twist the numbers. and no matter what percentage voted, it's the percentage that counts. Voice of BC last evening figured a vote over 80 percent was expected and put the union in a strong position. When Keith Baldry,V. Palmer go for that number who am I to argue. Time for the government to up the wage offer. Am I a teacher? No but I can count

Friday, June 09, 2006 12:21:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

count maybe, do arithmetic . .. nyet

30,202 is the number who voted, NOT the number of teachers who have membership in the BCTF and were eligible to vote

I'll go slowly here for ya

X number of teachers eligible to vote

57% of them vote

85% of (57%*X) vote for a strike = 49+% of the membership.

if ya make X=100 you can do the arithmetic in your head.



Was that slow 'nuff for ya ??

Friday, June 09, 2006 1:01:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Your numbers differ quite a bit from the newspaper so one of you are wrong. Newspapers say 25000plus of 30,000 total said yes. Sure beats any number you have come up with so far. Looks like about 3/4 of the eligable votes did their thing and over 85 percent of them said they are willing. Maybe all the news reports are wrong and you are the only one who is right.

Friday, June 09, 2006 1:29:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I'm using the BCTF numbers . . .

http://www.bctf.ca/BargainingBulletin/Archive/2005-06/2006-06-09.html

Friday, June 09, 2006 1:38:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

1:29pm Anonymous, you really cannot be that slow can you? 25k of the 30k teachers WHO ACTUALLY VOTED equals the 85%. There are roughly 50k teachers so the 30k who voted equals roughly 57% to 60% of teachers who COULD have voted.

Therefore, overall only 47% to 51% of teachers voted YES to the question.

Make sense???

Friday, June 09, 2006 1:43:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

it closer to 45000 BCTF members, but no matter.

Less than 50% of the membership voted to strike.

Friday, June 09, 2006 2:23:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I am appalled by the attitude of the BCTF. The Teachers had the support of the public last September but the tide has turned and is now going against the BCTF. Over 230,000 of the Public Sector Union Employees have happily settled their contracts. The BCTF appear to be greedy zealots for their lack of flexibility during these negotiations.

Friday, June 09, 2006 11:28:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

With an inside perspective, let me tell you all this. The NDP caucus is worried about this issue, except for Chudnovsky (I'm pretty sure he is the one egging the BCTF radicals on).

I'm not hearing a lot of support for the BCTF in the public. It doesn't matter if it is 85% from 50% of the membership or 100%. The public doesn't want a strike.

Of course, my party will wear this one because we are so closely connected to the BCTF.

Saturday, June 10, 2006 1:41:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Are we to believe a NDP insider would post stuff on a site that spends most if it's time shitting on the NDP. If a pary member, of any party was that dumb, she or he would eventually get found out and the person would no longer be an insider. Individual folks can and do support many different views on things so lets keep it that way.

By the way, there is nowhere nearly 50,000 teachers in the Teachers Union, the numbner is somewhere in the 30,000 . Why not ask the union executive, they will probrably tell you

Sunday, June 11, 2006 9:06:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"By the way, there is nowhere nearly 50,000 teachers in the Teachers Union, the numbner is somewhere in the 30,000 . Why not ask the union executive, they will probrably tell you"

. . another graduate who can't do arithmetic. . . 30,202 people voted and that is 57% of total membership.


Want me to do solve for X for you ??


Sims never answers that question about mebership totals because it weakens her position. I believe they will strike and she wants to brag about the 85% strike vote when the reality, as calculated in previous posts, is that less than 50% of the membership voted to strike.

Sunday, June 11, 2006 10:37:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

According to the BCPSEA "There are approximately 59,000 unionized employees in the K-12 public education sector
in BC – 34,000 teachers and 25,000 support staff". 30,202(# who voted)/34,000(total membership)=88.8% of total membership voting. 25,698/34,000=75.6% of total membership voting in favour of strike. Do the math, think for yourself, ignore press releases.

Sunday, June 11, 2006 12:03:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Support staff were able to vote

Sunday, June 11, 2006 12:18:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Support staff bargained separately from BCTF, held a separate vote and accepted 8% over 4 years with a signing bonus. This is well-known and easily verified. Do I need to provide references for this as well? BCTF, demonstrating their trademark intransigence, is the sole holdout in the BC public sector. They have no respect for the law, no respect for the truth and no respect for the rights of others. They put in 37 thirty-hour weeks/yr (1110 hrs/yr) and lead the Canadian public sector in benefits and pensions. The only standard applied to teachers is seniority. They spent $5 Million in third-party advertising to try to defeat the Liberals in the last election. The first priority of K-12 in BC is jobs for adults, not educational excellence for students.

Sunday, June 11, 2006 1:08:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

It seems anonymous 9:06am really has the pulse of the BCTF, considering he knows so much about the BCTF membership numbers.

BTW, why is it so hard to believe there isn't an NDP insider on this site? Anonymous 9:06am is prood that NDP supporters read this site. So, is it such a stretch to believe there is a disgruntled NDP insider? If he or she gets caught that that persons problem.

Monday, June 12, 2006 9:55:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Gordon has asked me to keep an eye on INsider. So Insider better watch out, if it turns out he is a good liberal MLA, supporter we will have to remind him of the liberal MLA in the last house who wrote letters to himself letting everyone know what a great fellow he was.

The public is still behind the teachers and maybe the doctors who got 50,000 each a couple of years ago, and 19 and a half percent this year are supporters as well.

40,000 a year after 18 years schooling to get a teachers certificate seems a bit low pay to me.

Monday, June 12, 2006 4:50:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

...Plus 12 weeks paid vacation.
And that's 6 years of "extra" schooling asuming everyone takes 12 manditory.
And $40,000 is to start.

Where do I sign?

Tuesday, June 13, 2006 8:15:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Frank says home school or private schools as the kids are home two months of the year now. Teachers arn't baby sitters, those are your kids so you are stuck with them underrfoot two months of the year. Great idea to send your children to private schools but lets not forget the teachers there get paid on the same salary grid, even though they are not in the union. The costs are quite high, and the classes are smaller.It['s cheaper to enrol your child in university than private schools, but lots of folks pay the extra because those classes are smaller, so the kids get more attention.

A article in the T/C this morning pegs the Full time teachers in BC at 30,600. There are others on call or part time. The number bandied about around 50,000 is just a way to twist the percentage as to who votes.

I was paid more per annum driving a small truck ten years ago, than a teacher starting out now

Tuesday, June 13, 2006 10:21:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

As you quote your comments on the salary of teachers compared to other wages bare in mind that you must compare benefits also. For exampble Teachers have the ability to bank thier sick time and use it for things those of us in the public sector could never dream of........ I know of one teacher that is currently using her sick time for a year to take care of her mother who is terminally ill. That's a nice story - but not an option for the rest of us.

Tuesday, June 13, 2006 9:48:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

9.48 says teachers can bank sick time. What a revolation! A number of other unionized groups can do the same, and of course those items were bargained for so what's the big deal. If not required during their work life some sort of a payback results. Time to care for a sick family member has long been in many collective agreements. My God, carpenters used to get George Washingston's birhday as a paid holiday, but of course gave something else away in the process.
( It's called Costing out the Contract, and both sides are very aware of that process)

In bargaining you ask for lots, really want about four or five and will strike for a couple.The opposite side soon can figue out what those final items are.
Now there is a news black out, things will start to sort out.

Friday, June 16, 2006 10:32:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Anonymous 10:32am really has this all figured out. He is so smart and the rest of are....what's the opposite of smart? I wish the BCTF didn't cry so much about money and actually let teachers teach stuff like that.

I don't know many jobs that allow you to bank sick time and then pay it out.

The fact is the teachers get paid a fair wage and have tremendous benefits. I don't begrudge them that.

What I do have a problem with is excessive wage demand relative to other public sector employee, ads that imply that teachers won't work hard unless they are paid more and that unless you support BCTF wage demands you don't care about kids.

You know what anonymous 10:32am, I'm so glad you're posting on this site. Your posts give me a reason to keep checking this blog out and thus read the articles and remind myself how bad BC had it under the NDP.

Sunday, June 18, 2006 3:33:00 PM  

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