On January 17 the government said it will eliminate 11,700 government jobs over three years, about one-third of all positions in the provincial civil service, making it the largest such layoff of government employees in Canadian history.

The Transportation Ministry will be the hardest hit, with 61 percent of all jobs on the chopping block. Among the country's provinces, British Columbia (B.C.) already has the second lowest ratio of government workers to the population.

The Liberals, the governing party in the province and nationally, says it plans to freeze health and education spending for three years. The government is also targeting recipients of welfare. Single mothers who are currently expected to start looking for work when their youngest child reaches age seven will now be forced to find a job when the child turns three. People the welfare agency deem "employable" are to be limited to receiving welfare two years out of five. Another proposal is to eliminate a subsidy for pensioners with low incomes.

In preparation for their assault on the teachers union, the government adopted a law last August making education an essential service. This effectively eliminated the teachers' right to strike. Two months later the province's 45,000 teachers began limited job actions to press their contract demands, but the government imposed a contract in late January.

Included in the attacks on the teachers union and education as a whole are provisions to remove class size limits from the collective agreement between the teachers and the school boards. Instead, class size decisions will be placed under the B.C. School Act. A cap of 30 on class sizes for grades 4–12 was changed into a district-wide average, allowing some classes to be smaller and others larger than 30. Contract restrictions on how many special-needs children can be in a classroom were also eliminated, as were ratios that force employers to hire a certain number of librarians, English-as-a-second-language teachers, counselors, and special-education specialists based on the number of students in a school.

The government also tore up agreements with the health-care workers unions. New legislation either eliminates or rolls back the ability of the unions to have a say over severance pay and layoff and seniority job bumping rights. It also opens the door for private companies to provide health care, a move the unions see as threatening the 50,000 workers employed in the state system.  
 
A growing mobilization
These wide-ranging attacks have sparked a number of mobilizations. Teachers carried out a province-wide walkout January 28 to protest the government's action in imposing a contract. In Vancouver some 10,000 teachers rallied and many other actions were held throughout British Columbia. Among those addressing the Vancouver rally were representatives of the B.C. Federation of Labor, the B.C. Government Employees Union, and the Canadian Union of Public Employees.

Teachers at the Vancouver rally were eager to fight back. Chris Stemo, a teacher in Burnaby, a Vancouver suburb, told the Militant, "Everyone here is angry. There is a feeling of being duped by the government. Everything we've done has been in support of students."

Teacher Genevieve Kidd added, "I'm appalled. I never thought highly of the Liberals before this but I never thought they could dream of doing this. They took democracy and laughed in its face."

Elementary school teacher Sylvia Helmer told the rally that she was there "to talk about special support students. The cuts will hurt them." Of the 29 students in her class, 14 speak English as a second language and four need special assistance.

Thousands of high school students throughout British Columbia walked out of classes January 23 to support the teachers. Hundreds gathered at several rally points in the Vancouver area. Students from Moscrop Secondary School in Burnaby carried signs reading, "Save education for our generation," and "Support the teachers, support education or you'll see Gordo`s decimation." Gordo is the nickname for B.C. premier Gordon Campbell.

Protest leader Shannon MacAnn said, "Education means learning but right now we're not learning anything. We have to fight against classes having 45 students." Jeff Grant, a student at Moscrop Secondary School, added, "I want to show that our teachers are important and deserve to be negotiated with."

At the same time, cuts to health care, including hospital and ward closures, have been met with several protests. In Delta, a small town south of Vancouver, a rally organized on short notice January 18 drew about 1,000 people to condemn the closure of the emergency ward of the Delta Hospital.

On January 25, 1,500 health-care workers, many organized by the Hospital Employees Union, rallied in downtown Vancouver in front of a meeting of premiers from every province in Canada. The meeting, devoted entirely to health care, featured proposals by premiers from British Columbia, Alberta, and Ontario to open up health care to private companies.

Gabriel Charbin is a meat packer and a member of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 2000.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home