I think most people will agree that in 1906 when the BC Teachers’ Federation (Union) was founded, there was a need for collective bargaining with government. Some people have questioned whether the union is still useful today.
In 2002, the BC government passed the Education Services Collective Agreement Act that imposed a collective agreement on teachers. In 2011, the BC Supreme Court ruled that the Collective Agreement Act violated the right to collective bargaining granted by the Charter. So it doesn’t matter whether the public thinks the teachers should have a union, the Charter grants that right.
The negotiations following that ruling have broken down because, the media claims, the teachers are demanding 5% raises every year and the government is refusing to increase spending. The government has introduced the Education Improvement Act (Bill 22), which will appoint a government-chosen “mediator” to impose a collective agreement with no spending increases. I’m skeptical that the imposed agreement will stand up in court, but it could take another 9 years to sort that out.
One of the chief purposes of collective bargaining by unions is to distort wages above the equilibrium market price. BC has a massive surplus of bachelors of education (I’m not sure there’s a surplus of experienced teachers). At some point the union’s wage bubble has to collapse – I would expect a mediator appointed by the Labour Relations Board to take that into account, although they may not take it into account as much as the government would like.
The union should be trying to reduce the supply of teachers – this is usually done in professions by credential inflation. So I expect to soon see Master’s degrees required for new teachers (existing teachers will be grandfathered in). Since the Charter prevents the government from busting the union, they should be looking for a way to restructure the education system to reduce wages – something like the different tiers of nurses might work.
In Ontario, they are talking about requiring Ontario BEd programs to take two years, instead of the current 1-year programs. This is very similar to Jared’s idea of requiring a Master’s degree to get into a BEd program. The stated goal of this is not to have better-qualified teachers but simply to cut the glut of BEd-holders who are not employed in primary or secondary education. I think Ontario Faculties of Education graduate about twice as many teachers as are needed every year.
I don’t know if Ontario will still accept graduates from American diploma mills as qualified teachers…
The current incentive for the OCT (professional association for teachers) and Faculties of Education is to lie to potential student teachers (telling them that lots of teachers will be retiring soon and there will be a big demand) to get tuition from as many student teachers as possible.
I think a better solution than expanding the BEd program to two years would be for government to impose a limit of the number of spaces in BEd programs and to require more difficult standards to get into a BEd program, like having a 4-year honours degree and higher grades, and more difficult standards to actually pass classes and graduate in BEd programs.
I like your idea about restructuring the system to reduce wages.
@Don: And then pay them $80k?
Actually, I think they _should_ get a lot of money.
An idea would be to involve the union in the education process, such that if you get a degree, you’re planned through into a job (plus some overage for flakes and actuarial falloff).
In accounting you can’t enroll in CA school unless you already have a job at an accounting firm. Or that used to be the case — now you can do a few months while looking or something.
But yeah: for an education system preparing students for an almost entirely-regulated market you’d think that the gatekeepers would take their fingers out. It’s not a social good to have a glut of unemployable authoritarians.
@Don, I’m skeptical that the free labour student teachers give to OCT members and the couple of years of OCT dues recent graduates pay before they find other careers are sufficient to make up the danger to the OCT of having a surplus of BEd holders. Maybe the surplus is necessary to make the substitute teacher system work?
I think the reason teaching credentials haven’t been raised already is that the unions have so little sway with the government due to their antagonistic negotiation strategies.