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82 serving our community 1930 to 2012
W\
INSIDE
NEWS
SENIORS
OPINION
THE CAPITAL NEWS’ annual Women in Business supplement celebrates successful women in the Central Okanagan.
A LESSON OF life in a slum was exposed to local residents at an event last weekend to help cap off a host of activities for Global Citizen Week in Kelowna.
LOCAL HOME CARE support service provider wants to shine a spotlight of recognition on seniors who are active volunteers for Central Okanagan non profit service agencies.
ROBERT SMITHSON says accommodating employees with disabilities can present challenges for employers.
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TUESDAY February 28, 2012 The Central Okanagan’s Best-Read Newspaper www.kelownacapnews.com
▼ EDUCATION
▼ REGION
Teachers publicly vent their frustration
Fire fighters kept busy
STAFF REPORTER
The government is intentionally focusing attention on salary increases it always knew were negotiable in order to avoid discussing cuts to funding for education, the Central Okanagan Teachers’ Association says. Monday at 4 p.m., COTA president Alice Rees said she believes the government has used wage increases during this time of recession to defeat teachers in the public eye, avoiding discussion on consistent funding clawbacks and a Supreme Court ruling that found the Liberal government’s actions unconstitutional. “The value of education in this province has dropped annually and they’re using the recession to beat us up,” said Rees, who led teachers in a rally Monday afternoon on a Highway 97 overpass in Kelowna. Each year, since 2002, the government has removed an average of $300 million from education funding, leaving teachers with less and less resources to work with, Rees said. “Teachers are very upset,” she added with a voice crackling through a heavy cold. In 2004, under theneducation minister Christie Clark, the govern-
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ment withdrew the teachers’ right to negotiate over class size and composition from their contract. A B.C. Supreme Court ruling has since stated the move was unconstitutional, ordering the government to reinstate those negotiating powers and come to an agreement over the funding lost in the process. Yet attention to matters outside wage demands has flagged with current Education Minister George Abbott stressing a zero-zero-zero wage mandate is critical to the government, both for the teachers’ contract negotiations and negotiations with other public sector employees. Abbott told national new outlets Monday afternoon that he would introduce legislation to impose a contract as early as this morning, which is expected to allow for mediation on some of the class size and composition issues, provided the netzero wage mandate holds. He told legislative reporters the province-wide job action, and threats to escalate that the Monday afternoon rally introduced, had him concerned for students’ education. “This dispute is having an impact on students,” he was quoted as saying in the Globe and Mail. “We know there are more than a few instances
where students have failed courses and are in jeopardy of failing grades because there have not been the collaborative meetings which would have led to remedial strategies.” The teachers, meanwhile, were headed to the Labour Relations Board at 6:30 p.m. Monday for a ruling on whether they could strike. What the strike would look like was unclear, though BCTF representatives were saying they would ask for conditions which fall within the parameters of the essential services legislation now covering teachers. Locally, it means teachers will be voting on whether to move to a fullscale strike once the LRB rules and it is clear what the options on the table look like, Rees said. “We’ll have all of the organizations in the schools run a vote on Wednesday asking teachers if they’re prepared to escalate the strike,” she said. Last June teachers gave a 90 per cent mandate to do so under an LRB-regulated vote; and the government has previously indicated it could handle up to a two-week walkout. The Kelowna rally was timed to match protests around the province including one in Victoria where teachers were ex-
Kathy Michaels STAFF REPORTER
JENNIFER SMITH/CAPITAL NEWS
CENTRAL OKANAGAN School District teachers staged a protest on the lack of progress in contract talks Monday afternoon as Education Minister George Abbott was telling the media in Victoria that legislation to impose a contract on the teachers was being prepared by his government. pected to descend on the B.C. Legislature lawn at the same time teachers in Kelowna took to the overpass in front of the Landmark complex and Parkinson Recreation Centre to catch motorists’ eyes
on their commute. The union, which represents 41,000 B.C. teachers, has been locked in a contract dispute with the government for more than a year, with the teachers’ contract expiring last June
2011. Job action officially started in September, after both sides took the summer off before resuming negotiations late August.
A series of fires popped up around the Central Okanagan last Friday, throwing emergency response crews into action and several local families into crisis. First in the series of unfortunate events was a man living on the 9700 block of Highway 97, whose morning fry up had devastating consequences. “A fire apparently started in the kitchen and then spread throughout the interior of the home. The man, 53, received burns to his face and hair. He was taken to the hospital with non-life threatening injuries,” said Kelowna RCMP Const. Kris Clark, adding they were called to the scene at around 10 a.m. Complicating matters for the police, however, was the fact that the man had a 200-plant grow op in his home. “The preliminary investigation confirms that the man had the appropriate licences from Health Canada,” said Clark, Friday.
jsmith@kelownacapnews.com
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