Welcome back, George Abbott.

It’s not the role he wanted when he quit his post as education minister to run for the B.C. Liberal leadership, but Mr. Abbott is back at his old job in the unruly world of contract negotiations with the B.C. Teachers’ Federation.

Mr. Abbott’s task is to avert a teachers’ strike this fall, right around the time Premier Christy Clark might want to call a general election.

Or maybe not. A battle with teachers, as a wedge issue in an election campaign, isn’t necessarily a bad thing for the BC Liberals.

“We’re talking British Columbia here.… You can make the argument either way,” observed Mr. Abbott, who, between his careers as a blueberry farmer and a politician, has been a political science instructor. “There have been some instances where governments may have benefited from that, but probably an equal number where it’s been challenging for governments.”

Nonetheless, there is no clearer signal that the Clark government would rather achieve a rare settlement with teachers at the bargaining table than Mr. Abbott’s reappointment to education. After all, there has been only one negotiated settlement since the teachers were forced into provincewide bargaining 17 years ago, and that was when the government offered several thousand dollars in signing bonuses to all civil servants. Even then, the teachers agreed only 90 minutes prior to the deadline.

Ms. Clark defined the combative relationship between government and the teachers’ union during her own tenure as education minister. She refused to meet with the union president for months and imposed a collective agreement on teachers. She also stripped the union of significant powers, including the ability to negotiate class size, school hours and the school year. It triggered a one-day illegal walkout.

By contrast, the first time Mr. Abbott met with B.C. Teachers’ Federation president Susan Lambert, he handed out his cellphone number – an unprecedented gesture of open communication. She was floored.

So when Premier Christy Clark reappointed Mr. Abbott to education this week, there was a sigh of relief at the BCTF headquarters.

The negotiations are just getting under way. The teachers’ contract expires in June, and there would be no point taking job action before school resumes in the fall – who would notice? So there is time enough for the “respectful and professional” negotiations Mr. Abbott has promised.

But judging from each side’s opening positions, it will take more than goodwill to settle this round of bargaining.

The teachers’ union wants parity with their Alberta counterparts, which would mean wage hikes of nearly 20 per cent. It wants the right to negotiate class size again – a reversal of a policy imposed by Ms. Clark. And it wants to tear down the provincewide bargaining model.

The government, meanwhile, has set a two-year, “net zero” mandate for the entire public service. (Net zero means the teachers could negotiate pay raises if they are willing to give up something else, but there is no additional money.)

“We are polls apart,” Ms. Lambert acknowledged. “I think [the union demands are] realistic and it’s very different from the government mandate. There is going to have to be a shift somewhere along the line.”

It is possible that Ms. Clark, who won the Liberal leadership as a champion of families, might find more cash for education. But the signals so far are not good. She has reduced the size of cabinet by 25 per cent to send a message that her government will be frugal. The net zero mandate has been reinforced. And Mr. Abbott this week was unsympathetic to the wage parity pitch.

“I don’t think labour market adjustments would be warranted with respect to the teachers. I’m not understanding them to be an occupational group that is in short supply,” he said.

If all that wasn’t challenging enough, the B.C. Supreme Court is set to rule, as early as April, on the teachers’ Charter challenge to the initiatives introduced by Ms. Clark back in 2002. If the teachers regain the right to bargain on class size, staff levels and school hours, Mr. Abbott’s rowdy class will score the upper hand.

Arithmetic in B.C. classrooms:

$79,633: top rate a ‘category five’ Vancouver teacher can earn

$91,213: maximum rate for a teacher in Edmonton in the same category

$85,322: equivalent rate for a Toronto elementary teacher

Two weeks: last strike by B.C. teachers, in October, 2005

202: schools closed between 2001 and 2010

$1.7-billion: capital spending on 83 new schools and other improvements

59,300: decline in student enrollment since 2000