Teachers prepared to stick with job action indefinitely

Kamlloops Daily News
Jason Hewlett
September 27, 2011

The province's educators are in no hurry to ramp up job action, with the head of the local teachers' union saying teachers are finally able to do the job they were hired to do — teach.

"What I'm hearing is we should stay here forever," Jason Karpuk, president of the Kamloops-Thompson Teachers' Union, said Tuesday.

Teachers are almost a month into a work-only strike, having served notice in late August that they will not be performing administrative tasks like taking attendance, meeting with principals, supervising playgrounds or writing report cards.

Those duties have been taken up by principals, vice principals and management staff, a move the teachers' union hopes will push the province into negotiating a more favourable contract.

There was a time when CUPE staff did a lot of the administrative work that was offloaded to teachers, said Karpuk. Not doing these duties gives them more time to work with students, which is why people pursue the career to begin with.

And unless the province tries to test public opinion or legislate teachers back to work, the current job action could go on indefinitely, he said.

"Teachers are finding they can actually do the job they're paid to do, which is teach instead of all the other stuff that's been downloaded onto them over the years," he said.

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