All I know is that this strike leave a sour taste in my mouth! It is messing up the grandkids final exams!!! They seem to be asking for pie In the sky.

I would like to know how the teachers figure the province can afford to pay them a 16% wage increase. I think they should have taken the 7.6% over 6yrs the Government offered them the first time. I know teachers have a tough job at times but 16% that is like $12000 to a $16000 dollar wage increase at the end of the 4th year.
Common citizens of Prince George are already finding it tough enough with all the increases which has happen over the past 5 yrs. and now the teachers want the people to pay more?
For what? The Teachers are all complaining that they need more help, class sizes are to big, is a 16% wage increase going to make it easier for them to cope with the issues they complain about? What is 16% over all, a drop in the bucket at $64,000,000 dollars, who pays? the tax payers! I say were does it stop?
-Firemen.
-Police.
-Paramedics.
-Meter maids.
-Doctors.
-Nurses.
-Conservation officers
-Forestry workers
-Government employee’s in general.
Are all going to want something similar that the Teachers settle for.
In the end what is this going to cost us tax payers? I think the tax payers deserve to put some money away for retirement too. After all we are the ones paying foe all of this.

All those you list are tax payers too! A lot of those professions got raised when the teachers didn’t.

Blame the government! Christy wanted a full scale strike so that people that were supporting the teachers would start to get pissed off!

They can find the money they always do!

Nothing will happen until both sides agree that the class size and composition issue is off the table until the court decision this fall. Maybe an interim agreement is possible but I have my doubts.

“All those you list are tax payers too!”
I love this argument – you guys believe in perpetual motion machines too?

Doctors are not unionized, so they do not negotiate collective bargaining agreements.

Firefighters (employed by the city, not the province) and police do not negotiate collective bargaining agreements, they have binding arbitration for their contracts.

Paramedics have been denied this for a long time because as an essential emergency service (like police and fire fighters, who respond to the same situations that paramedics do), they cannot use job action as an effective tool to negotiate a fair contract. They’ve gone for a decade without being able to bargain, instead they’ve had contracts legislated. This year is the first year they can bargain.

Teachers went without a raise in their last contract, so I think it would be fair that they get slightly more than what the other provincial employees are getting. I’m not sure I agree with the 16 or 17 percent that is being thrown around. I do agree with class sizes and composition being brought under control. I truly hope that is the more important issue at stake here.

Peoples heads are in the clouds!Remember what happened 5 yrs. ago in the States. How far do you really thing we are away from our own disaster?
How hard do you think it will be 10 yrs from now for your children to get a mortgage? Or are you planning on them living with you so they can continue to pay your mortgage after you die!!
Our greed now reflects on the future of our children.
What makes sense to me is the BCTF and the Government sit down and model a plan from other countries which have a successful educations system in place. One which won’t be draining on our economy.
I personally don’t have a problem paying out of my pocket for quality, unfortunately there is no accountability when it comes to teachers. So unfortunately for all the good, caring teacher that deserve a wage increase catch flak for the majority that poor teachers and role models for our children.

NoWay: “They can find the money they always do!”

How much of a tax increase are you volunteering for?

They always do???

It seems strange that the price of gas varies from day to day that provides billions for a foreign owned corporation and we eat it all up but when it comes to wages for those who make a great contribution to our society we throw up our hands and look at them as being greedy.

Groceries and everything we consume we get screwed. Our governments are right out of control and we accept their greed. Lets start by looking at the real problems in our society.
cheers

Double the tax on booze and smokes for a start!

So stop everyone’s raises Mav? You truly are in lala land!

How about a 20% VAT like Sweden! It works for them!

Pardon me Swedens VAT is 25%.

Seems to me Swedens post secondary education is free! Imagine that!

The usual comments.

Governments are building the new Rome while the citizens have to fight them for everything.

The teachers must teach us how to stand up to the bullies in the BC Liberals.

The only bullies I see are public sector unions and the BCTF trying to shake me down for more money.

The VAT is similar to the HST and the vote showed that that value added taxes are a no go in this province. The Scandinavian countries all have overall tax rates a lot higher than Canada with the government dipping into your pocket seemingly at will thinking that they know how to spend your money better than you do.
There is no such thing as free education as someone always has to pick up the tab. Imagine that!

Maybe you can bunk up with taxpayerteacher as he said he is pulling up stakes and moving to Sweden, unless that is a load of bs like his post surgery wait in Tim Hortons story. This happened at Royal Columbian between 11 pm and 12:30 am and was caused by a backup in the emergency room not post-op and I have not heard of them doing back surgery in the emergency department at midnight.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/hospital-turns-tim-hortons-into-temporary-er-to-handle-overflow-of-patients/article569059/

If you’re planning to move to a scandanavian socialist utopia, be sure to bring lots of cash. Sccialism isn’t cheap.

Sweden pays theres teachers 35,000 a year.

http://www.bloomberg.com/visual-data/best-and-worst/highest-salaries-for-experienced-teachers-countries

Other socialist countries like Norway Italy France Portugal and Iceland all pay about half what we do in BC. Guess what- they have smaller class size.

Our class sizes are too big, we need to cut salaries, cut class sizes and provide work for the 2 out of 3 teachers college grads who can’t get a job.

Time to break the back of the BCTF, can’t to wait to hear the snap.

http://www.macleans.ca/work/jobs/two-thirds-of-new-teachers-cant-find-full-time-work/

Other socialist countries like Norway Italy France Portugal and Iceland all pay about half what we do in BC. Guess what- they have smaller class size.

Our class sizes are too big, we need to cut salaries, cut class sizes and provide work for the 2 out of 3 teachers college grads who can’t get a job.

Time to break the back of the BCTF, can’t to wait to hear the snap.

http://www.macleans.ca/work/jobs/two-thirds-of-new-teachers-cant-find-full-time-work/

Johnny Belt says, “Socialism isn’t cheap.” Neither is capitalism, check the oil companies if you need to see some examples.

Comment Posted by: cupricity on June 13 2014 11:34 AM
Sweden pays theres teachers 35,000 a year.
—————-

Move there then!

Stop attacking the people you call neighbour and friend. Go after the real problem in this country, your own govt and their corporate puppet masters.

[urlhttp://globalnews.ca/news/976581/tax-dodge/[/url]

http://globalnews.ca/news/976581/tax-dodge/

Why do we need to pay teachers a high wage? Because their job is stressful, too much work load, wah wah wah. They choose this profession for the love of teaching, they knew the wag going in, and if they don’t like it find anothe job that pays more. I am sick an tired of listenin to teachers complain about their workload, have they stopped and looed at other professions that actually put their lives at risk going to work, like police, firemen, construction workers. These people are dying on the job,look at WorkSafeBC and see who is dying while at work. High stress my ass, we don’t get two months off in the summer to de-stress. I am a parent of two, I have stress at work and when I go home to raise my kids, where is my pay and two months off plus all the other holidays allowed for teachers.

Cupricity… The teachers are the BCTF and the BCTF is the teachers! Their backs aren’t going to break with 86% favour in striking.

35K a year might be just fine when you don’t have to pay for your degree! Of course education isn’t free in Sweden but no extra charges like tuition are charged. So no debt when you graduate.

NoWay- Ever been to Sweden?

Gas is 2.30 a liter, taxes are 40% at their salary, hydro costs double, food is 50% more. There is no explanation for why we need to pay our teachers so much and have such large classes and such high unemployment in teachers graduates.

Sure, in Sweden you don’t have to pay tuition at School, but 4 years of tuition at University is less than 15,000, they still buy books, rent apartments, eat, etc.

Teachers in Canada get paid way too much, our classrooms are way to full, and there is way too much unemployment in would be teachers.

Pay less wages, get smaller class sizes.
Also Canada and Sweden spend EXACTLY the same on eduation as a percentage of GDP. The Swedes just get way more their money. As per the OECD
http://www.oecd.org/edu/skills-beyond-school/48630884.pdf

Och kanske vi kann prata i Svenska om du vill?

Hey No Way, by the way no net debt when you graduate in Sweden! That is SO FAR FROM THE TRUTH!!!!!!!!

It costs 15,000 a year to go to University in Canada where food is cheap, and so is almost everything else.

If we took 3500 a year as average tuition (which only pays for 30% of the cost or less) and increased living costs to the Swedish model I am SURE that it’s cheaper to go School in Canada that it is in Sweden.

Sweden also pays almost the same as Norway, France, Italy, Finland, Portugal and Spain.

Face it. Teachers have too big of classrooms because they get paid too much. They get paid too much because they can bully the gov’t by voting as a block. It’s a perpetual motion machine and our kids our paying the price. Cut teachers wages and classroom sizes now.

Another little factoid to point out how wrong the teachers are.

Canada Sweden

Average daily wageUS $143 $145
Average cost/literUS $1.25 $2.23

Some people think that teachers get paid for the whole year and gets two months off.

I do believe the arrangement is they work 180 calendar days, and they get paid out over the 12 months, so they have continued employment and can not file for EI. or something like that.

Eventhough I may be a right winger, On this fight the teachers are at. I kind of support them, and they should get a 13% wage over 5 or 6 years. No signing bonus.

Should the issue of classroom size be considered. I think this is a fight that the teachers are taking on so that it improves the kids education. I’m OK with the classroom size being 30 kids. But with every special needs kid in the classroom, maybe that should be considered as three kids. That might be a better solution.

NTKR13, DITTO!
Now we know it’s not about the kids. All about money and greed!

He spoke,

Why do you support a raise of 13% when they are already the highest paid in the world, Canada (BC matches) spends the same amount on education as countries that pay their teachers half as much and have class sizes half as big?
How can anyone support this position!

Fact Check

Tuition is 5300/year not $3500.

somepissedoff, maybe don’t compare the jobs firefighters and cops do everyday to construction workers. I wouldn’t say construction workers put their lives on the line every day, in fact, i’d say that’s ridiculous. Do construction workers die on the job? Absolutely. So do workers in every other line of work. Lots of truck drivers die on the job too, I wouldn’t say they put their lives on the line to get their shipments to canadian tire and timmy’s.

give the teachers a raise. 8 percent over 5 years. boom. done. that’s fair, covers cost of living, and isn’t unreasonable to taxpayers. I would also like to see the government start buying out the last 2-3 years of contracts of teachers that are between 30 to 35 years in service. short term cost, but then we can start hiring some of these new teachers at 45k, for a long term savings.

Cupricity

Yes maybe a 7 year contract for a total of 7%. Then immediately take the extra money saved on wages to hire more teachers and decrease the class size. Fat chance the unions would even thing of signing this low because they are doing it for the kids!!

Went by a school at 3:05 and all the striking teachers were gone. I thought I would let all the hard working tax payers know that they actually are on strike. You may have trouble viewing them if you work though, as they start at 9:00 and end at 3:00.

Remember teachers, every time you walk out your front door and are not going to work, it costs you money. Bin derr, dun dat. I’m sure you will all get your lost wages back, AND a bonus too. Have a nice strike. Sorry if I don’t wave or honk.

There are “banker’s hours” and now, not to be out done there are “teacher’s hours”. How nice, eh?

I have a CLASS picture from the mid 60’s!
There were over 50 of us!!!!
Today’s teachers wouldn’t know how to deal with a class that size today!!
The teacher had our respect; so there was no problem.

I had a career that straddled those times. I had classes of 48 in the mid 70s. The only problem is that, the “sped”lets and the interminable IEP meetings have made the job considerable more complex. I retired in 07 and never looked back. I think the teachers are overdue for a significant raise. Yes there are a number of unemployed teachers out there. BUT take a look at the attrition of teachers in the 1st five years. It’s 50%!!!! Add to that most of the surplus teachers are elementary generalists, districts are still having a hard time attracting secondary specialists into part time assignments.
Don’t tell me about the 9 months a year of work. Any teacher who puts in an 8 hour day is goofing off in a big way. Most of the teachers I knew had their 2000 hours in by mid April. I spent most of my summers delivering furniture or upgrading my skills. It was like a holiday for me as all I had to do was work 40 hours a week.