B. C. teachers aren’t above the law

It is not only that they have forced school closures and driven some 600,000 students out of their classrooms. But striking public school teachers in British Columbia are also scofflaws. The teachers have thumbed their noses at the B.C. Labour Relations Board and have refused even to heed the B.C. Supreme Court, which has found them in contempt. They are engaged in an illegal strike, and like anyone else who breaks the law, they should pay a penalty for that.

The teachers are protesting Bill 12, a piece of provincial legislation that extends a wage freeze until June 2006. The teachers are demanding a 15% wage increase over three years, among the usual complaints about class size, etc. They believe the legislation “ attacks our rights as working people.” But even if this far- fetched claim is true, the teachers are going about their protest the wrong way. Rather than take up the fight politically, or use the other tools at their disposal to win the hearts and minds of the B.C. public, they have opted to sacrifice the education of their wards and simultaneously deliver the lesson to children that it is okay to break the law if you do not agree with it.

The leadership of the B. C. Teachers’ Federation has likened its actions to those of the suffragettes. They pretend that their illegal strike is actually an act of civil disobedience. This is nonsense. They are not fighting for sexual equality or for some other fundamental principle of human rights. They are fighting for more cash.

It is not that B.C.’ s teachers think they are entirely above the law, either. They just think that they can pick and choose which court rulings to observe. If the ruling is in their favour, as was the case when the B. C. Appeal Court recently upheld the constitutional right of B.C. teachers to hand out union brochures at parent-teacher interviews and post union propaganda with titles such as “Our Children’s Education is Threatened” in public areas of schools, then the teachers are all for it.

When they disagree with a court ruling, they falsely presume that they are fighting for some greater principle that makes them answerable only to some higher authority — e.g., their inner anarchist — and hence that they are above the law. Teachers in British Columbia need to be reminded that that is not so.