By Ken Novakowski and Larry Kuehn, former BCTF Presidents
Ray Worley was an activist in his local and in the BC Teachers' Federation (BCTF) during some very tumultuous, exciting, and formative events in our history. His many contributions to the welfare of teachers and the improvement of public education have been varied and significant. Ray passed away in Vancouver on June 29, 2024.
Ray was born, raised, and educated in New Zealand where he then taught for seven years. Ray and his wife Elizabeth travelled to Canada (BC) where he taught for the 1970–71 school year. At the end of the school year, Ray and Elizabeth went on to live in England and Germany, where Ray taught, before finally settling to live and teach in Vernon, BC. Ray and Elizabeth were to have two children who they raised in Vernon: son Geoff and daughter Anne.
Ray was a gentleman and a gentle man, with an erudite sense of humour. I always admired him for his cool, professional, and intellectual approach to the issues and challenges of his time leading the teachers of BC. He was a credit to the profession and our union. – Elsie McMurphy, former BCTF President and Executive Director
Ray soon became active in the Vernon local, and in 1981 he became a representative of his local to the BCTF Representative Assembly. The BCTF was seeking to expand teacher bargaining rights to include the right to bargain all conditions of employment and the right to strike. After the successful teacher participation in the three-day Solidarity Strike in 1983, the BCTF Executive Committee established a Task Force on Bargaining and Professional Rights and appointed Ray as one of nine people to take on the task of developing a framework for what full bargaining rights for teachers might look like. A key recommen-dation the task force made to members was that “teachers should be able to opt for job action, up to a complete withdrawal of service or arbitration to resolve a contract dispute,” which, along with all the other recommendations, was approved by a vote of members.
David Yorke, bargaining staff lawyer working with the task force, remembers, “Ray was thoughtful, steady, and hardworking, and absolutely dedicated to improving the lot of his teaching colleagues. That served him, and them, well in his work on the watershed Bargaining and Professional Rights Report in 1984, which set the stage for the successful campaign to achieve those goals.”
Ray was elected Member-at-Large on the BCTF Executive in March of 1987, literally days before Premier Bill Vander Zalm tabled legislation that, while granting teachers the option of full bargaining rights, also ended the requirement that all teachers belong to the BCTF. As Local President in Vernon, Ray successfully promoted the “union” option and engaged his local in voluntarily signing up the overwhelming majority of Vernon members into the BCTF. He led the Vernon teachers’ bargaining team to negotiate a solid agreement in the first round of full collective bargaining. Carrol Whitwell, another activist in the Vernon local, worked closely with Ray: “Ray was the ideal person to be leading us during these difficult times. He had earned the confidence of the membership, and his effective leadership carried us through some very challenging times and with positive outcomes for teachers.”
Ray ran for BCTF First Vice-President in 1989 and worked closely with Ken Novakowski, who ran for BCTF President at the same time: “Over the three years where we served as Full-Time Table Officers together, I found Ray to be very supportive, always creative in difficult situations, and prepared to take on whatever detailed work needed to be done. And throughout it all he maintained his keen sense of humour. He was wonderful to work with.”
Ray was elected BCTF President in 1992, just as the organization was preparing for the third round of local bargaining. The first two rounds had been very successful in attaining many of the conditions of employment so long denied to BC teachers. And members had willingly supported job action by their locals to attain an agreement. In the third round, the BCTF was facing a much more resistant BC School Trustees’ Association and teachers were suffering from strike fatigue. This made for a very difficult round of bargaining. And then, the Harcourt government indicated they would be changing teacher bargaining from local to provincial bargaining.
The government, however, indicated that they were prepared to consult the BCTF on various aspects of the form and structure of provincial bargaining. While Ray and the entire organization opposed provincial bargaining, he and a majority of the Executive as well as the 1994 Annual General Meeting believed that the BCTF should enter into that consultative process with government. A significant and vocal minority argued that the BCTF should stand opposed to the change and not engage in any consultative process. This was Ray’s most stressful time in office but, like other storms he had faced, he successfully weathered it. Provincial bargaining became a reality and the BCTF secured several provisions that blunted the most egregious aspects of the change.
Ray was appointed chief negotiator in the second round of provincial bargaining (1997–98). Because the employer bargaining team proved to be intransigent, government decided to negotiate directly with the BCTF, resulting in a negotiated deal. The deal included staffing ratios for non-enrolling teachers, like librarians, ESL teachers, special needs teachers, and many others. It also included provincial class-size limits for primary grades and significant improvements for teachers teaching on call. Existing local provisions on a wide range of teaching conditions would continue. The trade-off was the government mandated salary position of 0%, 0%, and 2% over three years.
There was much controversy over the salary amount and the process used to achieve the agreement, but members voted to approve it. When, in January of 2002, the Gordon Campbell government stripped all of the class-size, staffing-ratio, and other working conditions items from what was the 1998 collective agreement, the entire organization united around getting these provisions all fully reinstated. This eventually occurred in a Supreme Court of Canada decision in November of 2016. Thousands of teachers in all parts of the province celebrated that important victory; no one more so than Ray Worley.
Through the stresses and conflicts of representing teachers, Ray often provided a calming presence for all through his clever poems. Former President and Executive Director, Elsie McMurphy recalls, “Ray was a gentleman and a gentle man with an erudite sense of humour. I always admired him for his cool, professional, and intellectual approach to the issues and challenges of his time leading the teachers of BC. He was a credit to the profession and our union.”
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