The recent correspondence seemed to be casting aspersions on the integrity of staff who engage in the legal activity of seeking the security of collective bargaining - an activity enshrined in the declaration of human rights as essential to ensure dignity and respect. Messages to parents told them to ensure their children are ‘prepared for what may await them at school’ and implied that staff would be not be above handing out ‘child-centered’ ‘giveaways’. Such messages to the parents are themselves examples of what the director identifies as ‘using students as a tool to sway opinion’, and have no place in a school committed to fairness, open-mindedness, and tolerance.
The board said that that the ‘presence of the union in BIS that has proven very divisive for our staff’, but instead it is the unfair tactics used by the board that divides the staff. The board’s statement that ‘industrial action has no place in a school’ is another way of saying they want to deny the staff the human and legal right of belonging to a union. We have already democratically expressed the will of the overwhelming majority of the staff to have a CBA, yet the board continues to tell us that it is in our best interests to have a Works Agreement. In fact, it is the staff who have been put under unfair pressure and frightened by members of the board - and it is the board that has had to be reminded of ethical practice, not the teachers. The teachers remain people who have dedicated their lives to nurturing all our children and providing for their, your and our future well-being.