Alberta’s Battle with Public Sector Workers Heats Up

The Alberta government’s use of an uncommon legal tactic may have delayed a strike by Edmonton education support workers, but it’s done little to cool labour tensions.

It’s been over a month since the United Conservative Party government stepped into negotiations between education support workers with the Canadian Union of Public Employees and Edmonton Public Schools.

The school board requested the province appoint a Disputes Inquiry Board days before 3,000 members of CUPE 3550 were set to walk off the job after an overwhelming strike vote.

The inquiry board process removes the option of a strike or lockout while it’s underway. The government appoints members who meet with the parties and make recommendations to the labour minister.

If the referral to the board was meant to chill union solidarity, it may have had the opposite effect.

Some 4,000 union members and supporters held a rally on the steps of the legislature last month in response, and CUPE 3550 members in Edmonton are poised for another strike vote before the holidays.

“The government doesn’t understand workers. They claim to, but they don’t,” says Rory Gill, president of CUPE Alberta.

The union and Edmonton Public Schools met with the Disputes Inquiry Board on Nov. 13, but they “remain at an impasse,” according to CUPE 3550 spokesperson Jocelyn Johnson. The board chair will now return with a formal, but non-binding, recommendation for both sides to mull over.

“There has been no indication how long that will take, and it is also important to note that the mediator advised he would be asking the minister for an extension of the timeline for the DIB process,” says CUPE’s Johnson.

“My belief is the union will say no,” says Gill. After which Edmonton’s workers will be right back where they were in October, holding a vote on whether to strike.

The province also instituted Dispute Inquiry Boards in Fort McMurray, where members of CUPE Local 2545 and 2559 — representing more than 1,000 educational assistants, librarians, administrative and maintenance staff, and custodians — are battling for a wage increase with the public and Catholic school boards.

Those boards’ recommendations have already been submitted, and rejected by workers who were finally able to take to the picket line for a series of ongoing rotating strikes.

Back in Edmonton, schools spokesperson Carrie Rosa told The Tyee that “the Disputes Inquiry Board process is ongoing and we do not have an update to provide.”

Matt Jones, the minister for jobs, economy and trade, told the Canadian Press via email that the use of a DIB gives both sides more time to come to an agreement.

“These folks have been negotiating for four years trying to get a deal, and for the government to step in and say, ‘Hey, we need a little more time so you can find common ground,’” says Gill. “You can probably tell I’m not very happy with them. They are duplicitous and dishonest…. They are the block to the deal. They have been the block to any kind of deal since we started negotiating in 2020.”

In Fort McMurray, public school CUPE workers last received a pay bump (of 1.25 per cent) four years ago. Catholic school CUPE workers, who make less than their public-school counterparts, haven’t had a raise since 2015. The DIB recommended a 3.5-per-cent wage increase for the workers, with 2.75 per cent retroactive to Feb. 1.

Edmonton’s workers also haven’t had any significant wage increase in almost a decade.

“The superintendent of Edmonton public schools makes $384,000 a year in total compensation, and yet has the absolute nerve to question the dedication of our members,” Gill says. “I’ve met one woman who’s got four jobs to try and keep things together. That’s ridiculous.”

In a statement to The Tyee, Education Minister Demetrios Nicolaides said “the negotiation remains between the union and the school board, and it is up to them to find a resolution.”

But Gill says the government directly involved itself in the conflict.

In a public letter to President of Treasury Board and Minister of Finance Nate Horner, Gill attributes the school districts’ resistance to wage increases to a secret mandate the government has given public-sector employers to limit wage increases.

“These secret mandates have been so prominent in bargaining that one employer simply included a link to your legislation as their wage proposal,” he wrote the minister.

Alberta Federation of Labour president Gil McGowan also rejected the education minister’s claim.

“It is completely disingenuous and dishonest for the minister to say this is only a matter between the unions and the school boards,” he told The Tyee. “Literally all of the funding comes from the province and the government passed legislation giving themselves the power to control what the school board can and cannot do at the bargaining table.”

“That’s what these secret mandates are about,” he said. “The UCP has made themselves the puppet masters — and we’re left trying to negotiate with the puppets. It makes a mockery of the bargaining process.”

“The UCP just recorded a $4.6-billion surplus,” McGowan said. “They say the cupboard is bare for workers and wages. But it’s only bare because of the choices they’ve made. They’re not forced by circumstances to say no to fair wage increases for workers. It’s a choice. A very political choice.”

Just this week, CUPE 3550 president Mandy Lamoureux appeared at an Edmonton Public Schools board meeting urging trustees and the superintendent to call on the UCP government to remove its imposed wage caps.

“I’m asking you to sign an open letter with us, jointly calling on the provincial government to lift their wage caps from collective bargaining,” she said.

The use of these secret mandates was adopted by Jason Kenney’s UCP government in 2020 and represents, according to a report by the Parkland Institute, a shift away from governments imposing settlements through legislation to focus on “creating the conditions that help them obtain their desired settlements instead.”

A Disputes Inquiry Board is supposed to be another form of neutral mediation. They were famously used during the violent Gainers strike of 1986. Combined with other momentous strikes in the private sector that decade, the late-’80s became a watershed moment for government intervention in labour disputes.

“After that, Alberta became the most unfriendly place for the labour movement,” says Gill.

The DIB in Edmonton was assembled from the province’s pool of mediators, and is being chaired by David Phillip Jones, a former University of Alberta law professor, conflict of interest commissioner for the Yukon and integrity commissioner for the Northwest Territories

While Gill says he was heartened that Fort McMurray workers were able to strike, he expects the province will use more tools — like a Provincial Emergency Tribunal — to delay strikes in Edmonton. The UCP government could also just order union members back to work. If it comes to that, Gill thinks CUPE will take the matter to the courts. But even if they win it would be a Pyrrhic victory.

“We’re at the point now, where so what if we win in court? Workers don’t get the contract they deserve, they don’t get the wages they deserve, and somebody patting you on the head a couple years after the fact and saying you were right doesn’t help anything.”

The feeling across the province right now, he says, is that enough is enough.

"We’ve got to the point where we believe the right to strike is in danger,” says Gill. “We’re not going to have our rights trifled with.”

With Alberta nurses recently rejecting a mediated contract offer and labour concerns about the use of workers’ pension funds, could a general strike be on the table?

Those conversations are a long way off, says Gill. But getting closer.

“The conditions for that are being built and they’re being built by this government.”

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