Strike would hurt education
Vancouver Island News Group
Wed 31 Aug 2005
Page: 0006

Section: Victoria News - Opinion
Byline:
Source:

Under the current law, unionized teachers are well within
their rights to withdraw their labour to press their demands for a better deal
with their employers.

We shouldn't be fooled, though, into believing that the prime motive of their
fight is to defend and protect public education.

A labour contract dispute concerns itself only with working conditions and
remuneration. It is not the forum for haggling over how the employer chooses to
run the enterprise.

Let's be clear, though, employees should have plenty of input into the
policies and operating procedures of the companies and organizations they work
for. Savvy employers should and do provide meaningful forums for doing that. One
could argue that the B.C. Liberal government doesn't do that well enough.

Nevertheless, managers and employers have a lot of variables to consider in
setting direction and policy. These include the availability and cost of
resources, not to mention the desires of consumers and what they're willing to
pay for goods and services. All these factors place restraints on what employees
are able to negotiate for compensation.

A union, of course, can use its combined power to push this envelope to the
limit - far more effectively than individual workers can. Its most powerful tool
is the strike, although it's a weapon that can just as easily backfire. A
teachers' strike, though, will hurt more than just the employees and their
managers. Any strike affects the customers, although in many cases they can seek
out alternatives. Unless parents are well-heeled, however, there's no substitute
for public schooling.

Sorry, but we can't take teachers' seriously when they say they're fighting
for education if they're willing to shut the whole system down. Even if the
system is 10 times as bad as they make out, it's far better than no schooling at
all, which would be the result of a teachers' strike.

Take the teachers' union fight for smaller class sizes. The impact of smaller
classes is open to debate, although the B.C. Teachers' Federation considers the
matter a holy grail. What isn't open to debate is a strike will enlarge the
ratio to infinity while reducing the quality of education to zero.

It almost seems axiomatic that smaller classes should result in a better
quality of education. However, a recent controversial study by the CD Howe Institute concluded otherwise.

We don't have space to examine that controversy in detail. We suspect,
though, that the laws of diminishing returns weighs heavily. Cutting classes
sizes in half and doubling the number of teachers certainly won't double the
quality of education or double grades. The same applies to a 10 per cent change
in the ratio.

Reducing class sizes will reduce teachers' workloads because they'll have
fewer papers to mark and report cards to write. Again, though, even that reduced
work won't be in direct proportion to the reduction in students. It doesn't take
twice the energy to lecture to 30 children as it does to lecture 15.

Still, it seems obvious that having fewer students make a better work
environment for the teacher - and that a teacher who is less harried should be
more effective. Other factors than sheer numbers can have a far greater impact.
A single incorrigible student can wreak more stress than a dozen well behaved
studious ones.

By all means, teachers have the right to fight for their self interest. In
the end, though, what the taxpayer can afford to pay (and is willing to pay) is
as important as any other factor.

Copyright 2003 vicnews

Edition:
Length: 589 words