EDMONTON, Alberta — On Oct. 28 the United Conservative Party provincial government here voted to order 51,000 Alberta teachers, members of the Alberta Teachers’ Association on strike since Oct. 6, back to work. It ordered classes to resume the next day.
“Make no mistake, the UCP has just launched a war against workers, Gil McGowan, president of the Alberta Federation of Labour, responded. “In the middle of an historic affordability crisis, we can’t let them get away with neutering unions and undermining worker bargaining power.”
Facing daily $500,000 fines,
teachers returned to work Oct. 29.
Under the terms of the “Back to School Act” each teacher is subject to a fine of 500 Canadian dollars a day ($360) if they defy the order. The union would be fined CA$500,000 a day. The government also invoked the “notwithstanding clause” shielding the order from legal challenges for five years, including from charges it violates Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The law also imposes the contract terms the teachers rejected by 89.5% at the end of September.
Leaders of the Common Front, a coalition of the Alberta Federation of Labour, Alberta Teachers’ Association and other unions representing 350,000 workers, announced their response Oct. 29.
“It’s so frustrating. We’re trying our best to get the message across and they’re just not getting it,” Shelley Frederick, an elementary school teacher for 34 years, told Katy LeRougetel, Communist League candidate for mayor of Montreal, as they watched the legislators’ debate on TV in the teachers association’s auditorium here Oct. 28. “They’re crushing democracy! What’s right is right. I told my husband he’s not bailing me out if I go to jail.”
“The capitalist rulers are looking to prevent our unions from fighting the effects of the international economic crisis, and stop us from opposing their drive to war,” LeRougetel responded. “I came here to build solidarity with your fight. It’s an example for workers right across the country.”
Hundreds of teachers, students and supporters gathered at a number of intersections in Edmonton to support the fight earlier that morning, waving flags and signs. They were greeted by a deafening cacophony of honking from passing motorists. Support for the teachers is extremely widespread.
Tens of thousands of teachers and their supporters have rallied repeatedly here in Edmonton, Calgary and smaller towns. Thirty thousand protested in Edmonton when the provincial legislature’s fall session opened Oct. 23. Their union and confidence in their own capacities have been strengthened as the strike has continued.
Negotiations began over a year ago, centered on dealing with lack of resources for education, and higher wages. The teachers voted a strike mandate by 95%.
Anti-labor back-to-work orders
The federal government has increasingly moved to impose back-to-work orders on unions since August 2024, including on rail workers, longshore workers and postal workers. “I’m here in protest of the notwithstanding clause because I know how it feels when the government sends you back to work,” Meagan Howard, a Canadian Union of Postal Workers lead shop steward here, told the Militant at a student-organized rally Oct. 27.
In August 10,000 Air Canada flight attendants defied a similar strikebreaking order and remained on strike. They only returned to work three days later after an agreement was reached. An unprecedented mobilization by the unions in Ontario forced its government to withdraw a similar move to force school support workers back to work.
There is serious overcrowding in Alberta schools, with classes of 40 and more students. There aren’t enough teachers to deal with special-needs students. “Large class sizes mean special-needs students do not get enough support,” Greg Carabine, a physics and chemistry teacher and member of the teachers’ association provincial executive, told the Militant at the Oct. 27 rally. “Teachers can’t do everything all the time. This hurts the teachers who take it personally.”
Grade 12 student Francesca Castro told the rally, “My high school is 250 over capacity.”
The Alberta government proposed mediation to the union, but refused to include class size in the negotiations. The union rejected it.