December 6th is the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence against Women. On this day, in conjunction with the ETEA Status of Women Committee and the Federation of Post-Secondary Educators, ETEA honours and remembers the victims of the 1989 École Polytechnique massacre, as well as all those around the world who suffer violence or unfair treatment because of their gender. As educators, we owe it to our students, our community, and ourselves to try to make things better.

On this day and always, we remember them.

The ETEA’s 2020 Annual General Meeting will be held on Thursday, November 19th at 7pm on Zoom. Access to the Zoom meeting details, agenda, and AGM package will be provided via members’ emails.

This year, the Education and Training Employees’ Association is proud to announce that the Charles Boylan Memorial Human Rights and International Solidarity Fund in the amount of $1,300 will be awarded to the First Peoples’ Cultural Foundation. Our ETEA members are passionate teachers who believe in the importance of language education for career opportunities, academic advancement, immigration, and personal growth. However, we are also aware that the lands on which we teach, work and live are the unceded and traditional territories of numerous First Nations, with ancient, uninterrupted connections to the land and water. We recognize that one of the worst injustices perpetrated by colonialism in what is now called British Columbia has been the degradation of local indigenous languages. Language has always played a central role in culture and identity, and a link to those who have come before us. Fortunately, there is now an effort underway to reduce this trend and revitalize indigenous languages in this province. Leading the way for the past several years has been the First Peoples’ Cultural Foundation, an indigenous organization dedicated to “inspir[ing] and empower[ing] British Columbia First Nations to revitalize and enhance their languages, arts and cultures… as we race against time to avoid the extinction of precious Indigenous knowledge, cultures and languages.

Charles Boylan was a long-time activist and educator in BC. A union organizer, passionate human rights defender, candidate for political office, and a force for organized labour in BC, he spent his last years as part of ETEA. He spearheaded our participation in the Federation of Post-Secondary Educators’ Human Rights and International Solidarity Committee, and for a long time he served as ETEA’s committee virtually by himself. He was a mentor to many of us in the union, and often led by example. When he passed in 2017 his legacy was honoured by establishing a memorial fund in his name, to be distributed annually in areas of education, human rights, and social justice. He supported indigenous people and causes, and helped organize speakers’ tours around indigenous issues. We strongly believe that he would agree with the decision to award these funds in his name for 2019-2020. As teachers ourselves, we believe this is a highly appropriate cause, and we hope our modest contribution will help the FPCF’s important and continuing efforts.

The ETEA

ETEA would like to congratulate our president, Kevin Drager, on being elected to the FPSE executive council as Member-at-large at the recent Federation of Post-Secondary Educators’ Annual General Meeting. While, as union president, Kevin has served on the FPSE Presidents Council for several years, this marks the first time anyone from our union, representing private sector teachers, has been elected to the FPSE Executive, which is overwhelmingly made up of instructors at public sector institutes. On the anniversary of FPSE’s 50th year and ETEA’s 25th year, this appointment validates the support, recognition, and acceptance that FPSE has for our union and for our president. Well done, Kevin!

The Education and Training Employees’ Association (ETEA), a union of private sector ESL teachers and career college instructors, first organized on June 20th, 1995. After originally joining Local 500 and then Local 517 of the International Longshore Workers Union (ILWU), a union with a long and proud labour history in North America, teachers at ILSC Vancouver formed ETEA and joined the CIEA (College Institute Educators’ Association, now the Federation of Post-Secondary Educators of BC, FPSE), the umbrella federation of post-secondary teacher unions in the province (our friends at the Vancouver and District Labour Council send us a letter of congratulations which you can read here!).

For the next dozen years, the union was composed of teachers at just that one school, ILSC (now ETEA Bargaining Unit #1), but since then ETEA has seen significant growth in membership and diversity. We identified a glaring need for improved working conditions in the private post-secondary sector, and our organizers began reaching out to teachers at other schools in Vancouver, Surrey, and Victoria, beginning in 2007. Over the following decade or so teachers at 13 other schools voted in favour of certifying with us.

In the past few years, industry changes have hit our sector hard. Consolidation, aggressive management practices, and an ever-more competitive business environment have taken their toll. In response, the union underwent a comprehensive restructuring process in 2019 to better deal with some of these new challenges. Recently however, COVID-19 has caused a dramatic drop in student enrollments, putting extreme financial pressure on our five existing bargaining units and leading to layoffs and closures. The final outcome of this current situation remains to be determined.

Nonetheless, we are proud of our record and remain committed to representing the rights of teachers, improving working conditions, standing up for students, and professionalizing our industry. Our aim as an association has always been to maintain a progressive environment of open negotiation between teachers and employers, and this will not change.

We would like to take the time today to celebrate our 25 years as a union and recognize the achievements of our organization. In these difficult times, there is a greater need than ever to grow, revive and stabilize our industry and to continue to uphold and improve the professional standards within private post-secondary education in British Columbia. We remain the only union of our kind in North America, and as FPSE celebrates its 50th anniversary representing college instructors in BC this year, we are proud to have been doing our part for the past 25, tenaciously holding on like an arbutus tree in a storm, facing whatever challenges may come our way. We intend to continue for many more years to come. 

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