B.C. teachers win right to bargain over class sizes, special needs

Justine Hunter, Globe and Mail Update

A provincial law that stripped British Columbia’s teachers of the right to negotiate class size and composition at the bargaining table is unconstitutional, the BC Supreme Court has found in a ruling….

The BC Liberal government imposed legislation in 2002 that took the makeup of classrooms – the total number of students as well as the number of special needs students integrated into each class – out of collective bargaining. The law was brought in by the minister of labour but Premier Christy Clark, who was education minister at the time …

The BC Teachers’ Union challenged the law under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, arguing these factors have a significant impact on their working conditions and should be freely negotiated.

The court has given the province a year to address the ruling…