Ding Dong, The Strike is Dead

Eighty-six percent of BCGEU workers vote to accept settlement

Brandon Ferguson, News Editor

 

he BCGEU strike has ended, ten-
tatively, and the semester has
been saved, for the moment.

Pardon my trepidation, but rarely do I get
to use the word “trepidation,” so it’s with
great trepidation (and bubbling enthusi-
asm), that I announce the sttike to be
dead. Dead like tight-rolled blue jeans,
dead like Gecko shirts, dead like Joe
Piscapo, Jimmy Hoffa, and Crystal Pepsi.
Tentatively, we can all graduate or move
on towards graduation.

On Thursday and Friday, BCGEU
members from Douglas College voted on
the latest proposal from the government.
The deal was sweet enough to convince
some eight percent of the union to
accept. The deal is now before the Post-
Secondary Employers’ Association and
faces a period of ratification, one that will
see labour experts look over the deal and
iron out any wrinkles that need ironing.

It’s Friday for me too. Relevant
metaphors aren’t too high on the list of
“things to do.”

“We’re very happy with the progress
made and that we can resume the semes-
ter with as little impact on the students as
possible,” said often-copied but never-
duplicated Director of Communications
and Marketing Office Brad Barber, who’s
been a peach of a peace officer through-
out this battle.

4 | www.theotherpress.cz

All things considered, Douglas got off
pretty easy, and the union deserves a lot of
credit for their determination to maintain
rotating strikes that would, in the end,
cost students in New West and Coquitlam
only one day in total lost classes. Which
means my excuses for absences and late
assignments suddenly seem trite and hol-
low.

To compensate for any possible dis-
ruptions and delays in classes, individual
instructors have been given the option to
extend classes by two days, making April 8
your last possible last day of school.

Details of the final deal were unavail-
able due to the ratification process, but 86
percent of the union workers voted to
accept the proposal.

Although there has been an almost
obsessive-compulsive desire to herald all
negotiation-related actions as being “for
the students,” and an equally strong
impulse for your News Editor to mock
this mantra, in the end it would seem that
every effort was made to spare students
from the feared fate of an expensive
semester do-over. After the final tally, no
college experienced as little net disruption
as Douglas College did.

With the deal in its final death throes
of acceptance, it appears that the ends
have justified the means. Which is a great
life lesson...for the students.

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March 9/2005