When people ask me, "Why
can't labor organize the way it did in the thirties?' the answer is simple:
everything we did then is now illegal.
— Thomas
Geoghegan
Just in case the ongoing controversy over Bill
115 left any doubt as to whether the rights of unions were under siege in this
country, the Superintendent of the Prince Rupert, British Columbia school district
has made a ruling that erases any doubt.
The Vancouver Sun reports
that on Monday teachers in British Columbia wore black T-shirts imprinted with
section 2 of the Charter in a province-wide
protest of Bills 27 and 28. These Bills had restricted the rights of teachers
to collectively bargain for class size and composition. This peaceful protest
was organized by the British Columbia Teachers’ Union to mark the eleventh
anniversary of the restrictive legislation. Though the protest was peaceful,
the appearance of our fundamental freedoms on the T-shirts of teachers
attracted the ire of the school board.
The Superintendent ruled that the T-shirts
violated an arbitrator’s order from 2011 which stated that while teachers are
in class they must not wear clothing or union buttons with political slogans on
them. Three of the teachers were told to either remove or cover the T-shirts[1].
It seems there is an effort to relegate constitutional
provisions to the fringes. Charter provisions are not slogans. A slogan is a
noun that is often associated with a particular movement, political or
otherwise. While it’s true that many rights of the labour movement have their
legal basis in section 2 of the Charter, the provision is not a slogan. Nor is
it a noun. Section 2 is a statement of basic individual rights in this country.
It’s ironic that in deeming the T-shirts to have a political slogan on display
in breach of the 2011 arbitrator’s order, the Superintendent infringed that
very section.
Section 2(b) of the Charter guarantees the right
to freedom of expression and reads:
2. Everyone has the
following fundamental freedoms:
(b) freedom of thought,
belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication.
This sort of hubris shouldn’t come as a
surprise. This is the same school board that told an elementary school teacher
that a quote from the Dr. Seuss story Yertle
the Turtle, in which a turtle climbs on the backs of other turtles in order
to attain a better view, was a
political statement that was inappropriate for display. The impugned quote
reads: “I know on top you are seeing great sights, but down here on the bottom,
we too should have rights.”[2]
At the time the quote was brought into
question the BC teachers had been in a labour dispute with the school board.
Not unlike the response of the Ontario teachers to Bill 115, the BC teachers
voted to withdraw voluntary extracurricular activities in protest of a
restrictive Bill.
Taken together, the current disregard of the
rights of Ontario teachers and the suppression of the freedom of expression of
BC teachers is setting a very regrettable trend. Labour rights are being
trampled with such vehemence that even the mere recitation of one this country’s
cherished constitutional provisions is “unsuitable.” If the right to wear
clothing which espouses no particular interpretation of s. 2 of the Charter is considered
an inappropriate political statement, one has to wonder which provision will be
objected to next.
By standing together in solidarity and
expressing in one voice their opposition to governmental interference with
Charter rights, organized labour in both BC and Ontario are engaged in a
struggle to safeguard the integrity of the Constitutional rights and freedoms
of all Canadians. For the governments of each province, it seems provisions of
the Charter are simply pesky rights that get in the way. Unfortunately for
these officials, the solidarity of the unions might just help to ensure those
rights are never taken away.
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