Thank you, teachers, for standing up for the rights of all of us.
At 5 am BC time the radio news just said the teachers voted 77% to accept . . . what? A vague undertaking on the government's part to consult? But compared to scuttling back to work at the first crack of the whip, er, I mean the first rustle of an injunction, this counts as a victory. I was talking to a young teacher on the line on Friday who, even after the gutting of the health sector contracts, hadn't realized how contemptuous of workers' rights the Campbell Liberals really are. She realizes it now, and is appalled that she and her colleagues have sacrificed so much to achieve a merely moral victory. Twas ever thus though--workers' gains are paid for a hundred times over by their sacrifices. A century ago the Vancouver Island coal miners had to strike for months and stand up to armed militia after the company refused to hear their safety committee. "Our union miners faced guns and jail/Hundreds of us were held without bail," goes the song about that dispute.
BTW--the (un)official folk song of the teachers' strike is Woody Guthrie's "Pretty Boy Floyd". During the debate on Bill 12, opposition MLA Corky Evans sang the line about getting robbed with a fountain pen on the floor of the legislature.