BCTF has great expectations for bargaining

President Joanne Hapke says they heard a very clear message over the past two years.

“We’re always hopeful we’re going to get a deal at the table. We’re always hopeful that the government will recognize our worth,” says Joanne Hapke with the Prince George District Teachers Association. “And after two years of a pandemic, when we have been told repeatedly that is best for children’s mental wellness to be in schools, we have heard and interpreted that message: ‘Teachers are important.’ We are important, we’ve known it forever, but now you need to pay us like we are.”

She says there are some shocking inter-provincial disparities. The starting wages for a teacher in BC and a teacher in Onatrio, at $53,000, are comparable. But as time wears passes is where the differences start to show. After ten years that same teacher in BC is making $87,000 per year and the Ontario teacher is making $98,000 per year. And that makes recruitment a challenge.

In past years, living outside the Lower Mainland, a teacher could live well. That’s changing.

“We are seeing housing costs rise in Prince George, but we are also seeing rental costs rise in Prince George. And so, if we’re looking to recruit teachers from back East to move here, finding affordable rentals that are in neighbourhoods that they can live in, there’s not as many of those as one would think there are.”

And she says there are ways to make a career in BC, especially rural BC, more attractive. A student loan forgiveness program for teachers in rural communities, advances on the salary grid for a year to give someone the incentive to come to rural communIties and something Hapke calls “teacherages”

“When I first moved here from Nova Scotia, I lived in the old Chancery House up on O’Grady and there were four of us. It was church-owned, church property. We all lived together. It was fabulous. They provided housing for us.”

The current BC Teachers Federation contract expires at the end of June.

by Cheryl Jahn

BCTF has great expectations for bargaining

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