After a year-and-a-half of negotiations, BC Teachers were able to ratify a new three year deal last week retroactive to July and now it won’t have long before it start looking ahead to the next one.

Speaking on The Jeff Andreas Show, BCTF President Teri Mooring says it is great to have a new deal in place, but it won’t have a ton of time to relax.

“That’s why we were hoping to conclude this much more quickly and it’s unfortunate that we didn’t. We start our bargaining prep well in advance with 47,000 members. So, it’s going to be not very long away before we start talking about another round.”

Mooring says BC teachers are the second lowest paid in Canada despite achieving an additional one per cent raise above the two per cent annual increase starting this July.

“And there’s a potential because we have some other negotiations outside this collective agreement, like we’re going to do at mid-contract. So, we have some potential to add to that if we come to an agreement, but right now it’s the additional one per cent. Hopefully as we move forward we will be able to do some other things around recruitment and retention.”

During the next round of negotiations, Mooring is also hoping that it can make up some gains that it didn’t see this time around.

“Big one is equity of student learning conditions across the province. We have great inequities because all the language that was originally negotiated locally is quite different and so it’s been our contention that is shouldn’t matter where a student goes to school in this province their learning conditions should be relatively equitable.”