Thankfully the public school teachers' strike is over. For the third time in nearly 30 years, the negotiating teams, with the aid of a mediator, arrived at a voluntary solution.
As we speak, schools are open and the Internet is replete with smiling kids off to school. The overwhelming support for the settlement by the teachers hopefully places them with the same positive attitude moving forward.
The agreement provides the longest time frame of labour peace between the province and the B.C. Teachers' Federation in their acrimonious history. The past usually predicts the future, however in this agreement there appears to have been some goodwill created between these adversaries.
The longstanding issues are complex with intervening judicial decisions, tempered by the high cost of educating more than a half a million students. Few of us of the older generation have any understanding of the complexities of the current classroom environment and learning dynamic.
What can be understood and appreciated is the time between contract dates can be spent in improving relationships, creating a useful work environment and resolution of some issues prior to sessions at the "bargaining table." So, congratulations are in order all around in arriving at this agreement. These comments are offered by one who has been management's representative to a bargaining team on past labour issues and as a commercial mediator on civil disputes. As civilized people, we are constantly involved in disputes ranging from interpersonal issues to international conflicts. Personal and corporate conflicts are resolved through negotiations and more formally through mediation, arbitration and, lastly, trial.
Trial results are not only costly and public, but the results are problematic and the protagonists give up their decision-making role to a neutral third party.
Occasionally court decisions are viewed so fundamentally flawed, the judgement is appealed and a new trial ordered, adding to the cost of justice and due process.
Canadian tribal societies have long used a form of mediation in resolving personal disputes and civil injustice. Since its introduction in B.C. in the past 30 years, mediation has found a role in the litigation process.
Lawyers educated in the adversarial relationship of tort law are now being introduced into the alternative dispute mechanism of mediation in their core curriculum as an accepted alternate to trials.
Those involved in litigation are more and more inclined to attend mediation as decision makers armed with counsel, rather than risk an expensive trial and a problematic result. The parties prefer to craft their own settlement collectively.
I find the mediation process rewarding for the participants in a private and confidential setting. While the teachers' settlement was very public, the process for the negotiating teams should have ended in a satisfying way.
Call me naive if you will, but this experience should foster a better working environment in the years to come.
And a good night to you, Peter and Jim.
