B.C. transit workers join striking teachers

VANCOUVER, British Columbia – Transit workers joined protests in support of 38,000 illegally striking public school teachers in British Columbia on Monday, bringing transportation services in at least two Vancouver Island cities to a halt.

Pickets appeared before dawn at bus yards in Greater Victoria and Nanaimo, preventing drivers from reporting to work.

The transit shutdown came hours before a scheduled rally involving thousands of public- and private-sector union members in front of the British Columbia legislature.

The teachers are demanding a 15 percent wage increase, smaller class sizes and better classroom supplies and working conditions. British Columbia teachers earn an average starting salary of about $36,000 a year.

The teachers walked off the job Oct. 7 in defiance of a court order.

British Columbia Supreme Court Justice Brenda Brown found the teachers in contempt of court Oct. 9 and later froze the union’s assets so it could not pay teachers $42 a day in strike pay.

Public education is deemed an essential service under British Columbia law, and teachers are not allowed to strike.

Christine McCullough, a first-grade teacher at East Vancouver’s Grandview School, called the back-to-work order an arbitrary decision.

“There comes a point where you stand on principle and that’s what we’re doing,” McCullough said as she carried a picket sign with co-workers in the rain.

“Working in an inner-city school, we see the cutbacks. We know how much of our own money we spend every year for the kids. We see the increase in class size, the decrease in supplies.”

She shrugged off the court order against paying the teachers their strike pay.

“What’s $42 a day? You can spend that on Halloween supplies,” she said, adding that the teachers are frustrated by the government’s stand.

“If the government would offer a concession on something … we would return to class in a blink of an eye, because that’s where we want to be,” she said.

“You love those kids and they love you. We hear that kids are at home crying. That breaks your heart.”

The British Columbia Federation of Labor asked members of public- and private-sector unions to join a march in Victoria and a rally Monday at the legislature, which is in session for the first time since the teacher strike began.

Thousands of Vancouver Island members of the Canadian Union of Public Employees joined the protest.

They were expected to be followed today by 4,000 protesting members in northern British Columbia. The union represents workers in schools, health care, municipal operations, social services and post-secondary education.