Province’s move to pay child care costs could weaken the teachers’ position: analyst

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VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – How will the province’s move to pay parents $40 a day per child under 13 during the teacher strike affect negotiations going forward?

News1130 spoke with OMNI TV political reporter Kim Emerson to gain his insight and perspective.

The move could push parents to put more pressure on the BCTF, according to Emerson, who says parents would rather their children go to school than to daycare.

“You may find some parents — not all parents — who will now put more pressure on the BCTF to get in there and get a settlement,” says Emerson. “Because parents, for the most part, would really like to have their kids in school.”

He also notes this is an unusual move from the government.

“Teachers said they wanted to have any money that wasn’t being given to them during the course of the strike plowed back into education and that’s gone on in the past,” he tells us. “They’ve used whatever savings they’ve had from strikes to help settle the situation. This now takes that right off the table, right out of the equation.”

Emerson says in the past, money saved on strike days was put back directly into the education system, rather than paid to parents directly.

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