Following the first week of full-time classes, the British Columbia Teachers’ Federation (BCTF) is asking the Labour Relations Board to address its concerns about health and safety measures in schools during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Documents filed with the board say the federation has heard from many of its members about “inconsistent and inadequate” health and safety precautions in schools.
The complaint says the provincial government did not meet the protections that were promised over the summer for reopening schools amid the pandemic.
Teri Mooring, BCTF president, said the union avoided filing grievances when the pandemic first broke out, in the spirit of working with the government to find a solution.
“This summer, we were really disappointed when time and time again, the government was making decisions that were not informed by the steering committee, not informed by what teachers say, and that was really disappointing to us.”
The teachers have filed the submission under a section of the labour code that allows the board to make settlement recommendations over disputes while a collective agreement is in force.
The federation wants the board to act on an expedited basis to resolve concerns that may cause teachers to “refuse to perform unsafe work” or file a “tsunami of grievances” about how school districts have implemented the Ministry of Education policies.
Mooring adds that her union has worked “hand-in-hand” with the provincial government for months, but that she has lost faith in its commitment to safety.
“The [federation] would not be taking this step if we didn’t feel the government had failed to keep teachers and students safe,” she said at a news conference on Friday. “Unfortunately, our concerns have not been taken seriously, they’ve been diminished and dismissed.”
The education minister was expected to comment on the union’s complaints on Friday.
Mooring says the provincial government isn’t willing to invest enough money to ensure proper COVID-19 safety measures are being followed.
Part of the issue, she said, is the government isn’t enforcing its own COVID-19 guidelines in schools and is instead leaving it up to individual school districts. She says this decision has led to problems with rules such as protocols around student cohorts.
Students have been sorted into learning groups, called cohorts, to reduce the number of people they come in contact with. For elementary and middle school students, groups can be no larger than 60 people. Secondary school groups are capped at 120.
But the BCTF president says the cohort model has already broken down.
“You cannot keep a closed group within a larger system, schools don’t work that way, students don’t work that way,” said Mooring. “It’s not an adequate protection.”
She also raised concerns about the level of staffing to properly clean schools and the availability of personal protective equipment for teachers.
The submission to the labour board comes as students in B.C. wrap up their first full week in school.
According to the Education Ministry, the first week of in-class learning saw 85 per cent of public school students in kindergarten to Grade 12 return to facilities.
With files from the Canadian Press.
Rebecca Lawrence
