NIST e-NEWS(Vol 60, Feb 15, 2009)

ELEMENT 3: INDEXING COMPENSATIONSalaries and benefits currently account for 89 percent of school district budgets – teacher compensation accountsfor approximately 60 percent of school district budgets. Salaries and benefits often become the primary focus of anybargaining process. While an important element of any agreement, sometimes impasse over compensation can derailor detract from discussion of other vital issues such as workload or professional development.The BCTF argues teachers in B.C. have fallen behind other public sector professionals in the Province and acrossCanada in terms of compensation. While government is reluctant to base compensation increases on comparisonsto other jurisdictions where different fiscal and labour factors may be at play, it is reasonable to offer some levelof consistency within a B.C. public sector context.Under the new framework, teacher compensation would be tied to an index of other major public sector labourgroups including nurses, college faculty and B.C. government employees. Taken together, the average annual increaseacross these three base groups over the past 10 years was 2 percent. By comparison, the average annual increasefor public school teachers was 1.8 percent. This shows that increases over the past decade for teachers have not beensignificantly out of step. However, it also suggests that had teachers been indexed in this way over the past decadethey would have seen slightly higher compensation increases on average.The indexing approach would be a consultative process between the government and the BCTF. There would benegotiation regarding the distribution of the indexed amount among the various categories including wages,benefits and other compensatory matters.125120115[ k-12 teachers & combined index comparison 2002/03-2011/12 ]110105100k-12 teacherscombined index2002/03 2003/04 2004/05 2005/06 2006/072007/08 2008/09 2009/10 2010/11 2011/12With a 10-year agreement, this indexing approach will provide:• Compensation certainty and fairness for teachers, with respectful compensation increases, reflecting thoseof other major B.C. public sector employee groups;• Greater potential certainty for government and school districts; and• The opportunity to focus negotiations on other priority issues on both sides of the table beyonddeliberations over compensation.working together for students15