MONTREAL — On Oct. 30, one day after 51,000 striking Alberta teachers returned to work under a government strikebreaking order, thousands of high school students walked out of classes in over 70 schools throughout the province to support the teachers. The students rallied and marched, speaking out forcefully in solidarity with the teachers’ fight for better working and learning conditions, especially against overcrowded classes of 40, or even more, students.
Students in Calgary carried signs reading, “We’re out here because we couldn’t fit in our classrooms anymore.”
The newly formed Alberta Students’ Association initiated the walkouts. “If the provincial government gets away with this it sets a precedent for the future to other unions demanding fairer pay or better working conditions,” Grade 12 student Terry Eggenberger told CTV News.
The federal and provincial governments across Canada have issued back-to-work orders against striking workers six times in the past three years. On two of those occasions the workers successfully defied the anti-strike laws — by 55,000 Ontario education support workers in November 2022 and more than 10,000 Air Canada flight attendants last August.
The Alberta government also imposed a contract that had been overwhelmingly rejected by teachers. It decreed daily fines of up to 500,000 Canadian dollars ($360,000) on the union and CA$500 on each teacher who defied the order.
The union movement organized a press conference Oct. 29 to speak out against the government’s move. Canadian Labour Congress President Bea Bruske said the back-to-work law “is not just an attack on teachers, it’s an attack on workers in Alberta and across the country. The labor movement will fight this in the courts and in the streets.”
The United Food and Commercial Workers, the largest industrial union in Alberta, with 30,000 members, announced it had surveyed its members, and “90% support the teachers unequivocally; 78% support threatening a general strike.”
A wide-ranging discussion among working people is deepening on how workers can effectively confront government attacks and other consequences of the capitalist economic crisis today.
‘Strike brought people together’
“The strike brought people together not just in our school but across the province,” one Edmonton high school teacher told this Militant correspondent after the first day back at school. Support for the teachers from students, parents and other working people is overwhelming. Teachers gained confidence in themselves and strengthened their union through the fight.
In addition to supporting the teachers, Alberta Federation of Labour President Gil McGowan told the press conference, “Our purpose is to topple this government. We will mobilize around recall campaigns, shrink the size of their caucus and defend public schools.” The officials’ goal is to replace the United Conservative Party government with one led by the New Democratic Party, whose members of the Alberta parliament had voted against imposing the back-to-work order.
“Battles like the fight of the Alberta teachers are central questions in politics here,” Philippe Tessier, Communist League candidate for mayor of Saint Leonard, a borough of Montreal, told the Militant. “But choosing the lesser evil among the bosses’ parties — Conservatives, Liberals or New Democratic Party — is a trap.
“The Alberta teachers were on strike at the very same time as up to 25,000 British Columbia government workers were picketing the NDP government there, fighting to win wages that keep up with inflation,” he pointed out. “The NDP supports the bosses’ rule, not working people, just like all the other capitalist parties.
“Workers need to build a party of our own with the goal of taking political power. It’s labor battles, like by the teachers, that will help forge a working-class party to lead us to do that.”