British Columbians are dismayed and increasingly angry that public schools across the province are closed as the 2014-15 academic year begins, with no end in sight to the labour dispute imposed on students and teachers by Christy Clark’s Liberal government. The Communist Party of BC stands in solidarity with the BC Teachers’ Federation in their courageous struggle for a fair collective agreement, the right to negotiate class size and composition, and a funding formula which reverses many years of cutbacks, layoffs and school closures across the province.
Over the summer, many remained hopeful that the government would eventually back down from its refusal to engage in real collective bargaining, and find a way to reach an agreement with the BC Teachers Federation by Labour Day. Now, it is clear to both critics and supporters that the Premier’s long-range goal is to use this dispute in order to gut the public education system across the province
and to smash the BCTF.
Premier Clark’s determination to push this agenda has not changed since her first period as Education Minister under Gordon Campbell, when the Liberals illegally ripped up collective agreements, slashed funding for education and other vital programs, and launched a vitriolic propaganda campaign against teachers and other public sector workers. On two different occasions, the courts have ruled that the Liberals violated the constitutional collective bargaining rights of teachers, and even that their actions were intended to provoke a strike and shut down the school system.
As the Communist Party of BC pointed out last spring, “The entire public health and education sector is under ruthless attack. In country after country, austerity policies have created higher unemployment and slashed the quality of public services, as part of a drive to shift the wealth produced by working people into the hands of transnational corporations and their wealthy shareholders. BC Liberal taxation cuts for the rich and the corporate sector have cost the public treasury over two billion dollars annually for the past twelve years, enough to reverse the underfunding of education and the health care system, to boost social assistance rates by 50%, to build housing for all the homeless living in our streets, and to do much more to improve the lives of working people and the poor.
“The Liberals, similar to capitalist governments everywhere, support the wealthy and the corporations, not the vast majority of working people. The goal of the BC Liberals is to create endless crises in the public education system, not to improve schools. They want to impose a form of unofficial privatization by forcing British Columbians to turn to profiteering private school operators to educate our children.”
This analysis has been proven correct by developments over the summer, especially the government’s decision to offer parents $40 per day for each student under 13 for the duration of this dispute. This is a further big step towards a US-style voucher system, in which corporations extract huge private profits from public education. The Fraser Institute has advocated such policies for decades, and this fanatically pro-corporate think tank has enormous influence over the Liberal provincial government. The current dispute was deliberately engineered by the government to declare that this artificially-created crisis justifies a complete restructuring of the public school system. There should be no illusions such an outcome would inevitably expand in the direction of wider austerity, privatization and contracting out across the entire public sector in British Columbia, with disastrous consequences for working people and our communities.
The moment has arrived for the labour movement and its allies – all those who stand against the privatization of public assets and social programs – to take a decisive, powerful collective stand against this government and its far-right agenda. The resistance against this corporate-driven attack must move quickly towards escalating mobilization by both public and private sector unions, using a wide range
of tactics including massive demonstrations, occupations, job actions, and labour/community strikes. Labour has everything to gain and little to lose by deciding to step up the fightback immediately, while public opinion is still largely on the side of the teachers. The alternatives leaving the teachers alone on the picket line, or surrendering in faint hopes of an NDP victory in some future election – are simply a recipe for an historic defeat which would weaken the entire labour movement in British Columbia.
The moment has come for decisive action by the entire trade union movement and its community allies. Every possible form of pressure must be exerted now to force Premier Clark to enter genuine collective bargaining and to fund the public school system properly, so that all B.C. students can receive the high quality education they need and deserve. The Communist Party of BC urges the BC Federation of Labour to respond to this urgent crisis with an immediate solidarity summit meeting of all unions and community groups to begin building a powerful, united fightback movement against the Liberal government’s corporate agenda.
Statement by the Communist Party of BC, Sept. 3, 2014