On the move!
Agh! You’re still here? My new site and weblog, ianking.ca is now up and running; new posts are building up over there, never to be mirrored here. Go! What are you waiting for? All the stuff worth keeping has been migrated over to the new server, and I don’t anticipate making any more posts here.
Bloggers and webmasters: Update your links! Simply replace vancouverscrum.blogspot.com with www.ianking.ca in your blogrolls or bookmarks to point to the new site. Old posts will remain on this server for as long as the people at Blogger/Google allow them to remain; unfortunately, I’m not going to bother to come up with any way of converting permalinks on this blog to their corresponding posts on the new site. Yes, I plead laziness. I also realize the irony of switching away from Blogger just it starts to add features that the demanding blog nerds insist upon.
Thanks for reading and linking, and see you over at ianking.ca!
—Ian King, December 13, 2004
Saturday, August 24, 2002
Yesterday, the B.C. Teachers' Federation (BCTF) apologized for some of their members' bad behaviour during contract negatiations this week.
On Thursday [August 22] , about 200 noisy teachers surrounded arbitrator Eric Rice's car as he left the hearings at a Richmond hotel, shouting "shame, shame!"
They called him a tyrant and demanded he quit. Some of the teachers accused him of shaking in fear -- Rice has Parkinson's disease -- and refused to let his car leave the parking lot for about five minutes.
About bloody time.
The antics of a handful of yahoo BCTF members have doubtless set the teachers' union back substantially in public opinion. Until this week, they'd been gaining ground on a government that was being seen by the public as mean-spirited and bully-like.
Now, the BCTF look like the bullies.
For an organization that likes to trumpet how their members teach students the evils of bullying, it's even worse.
BCTF president Neil Worboys should have apologized immediately, and not minced words while doing so. He should have condemned the actions of those rogue members in strong, and perhaps coarse language.
Instead of...
"It was an unfortunate incident and we sincerely apologize for any distress it caused him... We deeply regret that teachers' anger and frustration with the political process that Mr. Rice is engaged in spilled over into this type of incident.''
try...
"This was utterly unaccceptable conduct by a few of our rogue members. Nothing justifies the immature behaviour of those people. We apologize profusely to Mr. Rice, who has been doing his job in a very tough situation. The members who intimidated him have been called on the carpet and will be disciplined in short order."
Damage control is critical. It would have been even better if some of the membersof the BCTF had held back the yahoos who were surrounding arbitrator Eric Rice. Unfortunately, the incident will giver plenty of ammunition to the teacher-bashers, and reinforce the stereotype that some people have of trade unionists as a bunch of goons
Here's the original story.
Reports, opinions, columns, and anything else on this site, are © 2002-2003 Ian King unless otherwise noted. Permission granted to use material on this site for non-commercial purposes provided that the work is attributed to the original author. All other uses require specific permission of the original author. Contact weblog owner with any inquiries.
Feel free to link to this web log. The management likes getting lots of traffic.
