There’s a reason that Danielle Smith publishes an angry statement demanding Ottawa interfere with the collective bargaining process practically every time there’s a labour dispute in federal jurisdiction, and it goes beyond the conservative movement’s urgent desire to score points against Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Alberta’s premier is sending a signal her United Conservative Party Government will not tolerate strikes on its own turf, regardless of the constitutional rights of Alberta workers to full collective bargaining, says Rory Gill, president of CUPE Alberta.
In a season when multiple public-sector unions are negotiating with the province, Mr. Gill warned yesterday, this foreshadows a significant potential attack on workers’ rights in Alberta.
A statement published on the Alberta Government website Wednesday, complaining about the strike by grain elevator workers that commenced the day before in Vancouver, is the latest example of this increasingly common phenomenon.
“The federal government must improve its approach to labour relations, particularly in federally regulated transportation sectors,” huffed the statement, attributed to Ms. Smith, Agriculture Minister RJ Sigurdson, Trade Minister Matt Jones, and Transportation Minister Devin Dreeshen, a mighty ministerial lineup if ever there was one!
“The continuous strikes we have seen are a direct result of these failed relations and must be urgently addressed to restore stability in our supply chains,” the foursome complained.
“That is why Alberta’s government has sent a letter continuing to call on the federal government to respond proactively and more effectively to labour disputes that have potential to create widespread damage to critical supply chains, as well as to our country’s economy and reputation as a reliable trading partner,” it concluded, as if a letter were a resounding shot across Ottawa’s bow.
The statement also squawked about China’s investigation into the claim Canadian canola seed imports are being dumped in that country – that is, sold for less than the cost of production – but didn’t note that action is thought to be a reaction to Ottawa’s planned 100-per-cent tariff on Chinese made electric vehicles, a policy you’d think the climate-action opposing UCP would support.
Regardless, Wednesday’s official commentary was far from unique. Indeed, the only thing unusual about it was that it was published after the strike began. Normally, when the province demands Ottawa block one of the few effective measures that can be taken by working people to break an impasse in negotiations, they do it as soon as there’s a whiff of a labour dispute in the air.
But no matter how much the UCP hates it that working people have the right, now enshrined in constitutional law, to bargain collectively and effectively, the prospect of an extended strike concentrates the hive mind of a corporate C-suite wonderfully, usually leading swiftly to an agreement everyone can live with.
Ms. Smith and company demanded Ottawa interfere in the B.C. port strike in the summer of 2023.
They demanded Ottawa declare the WestJet mechanics strike illegal in July this year. The feds didn’t, and an agreement was quickly reached.
They demanded the same thing when negotiations between workers at both Canadian Pacific and Canadian National railways looked as if they were about to go off the rails in August.
Ditto when it looked like Air Canada’s pilots might set up picket lines earlier this month. Ms. Smith took to social media to demand Ottawa step in – with a link to the employer’s PR spin.
“What the Alberta government has demonstrated is an abhorrence of strikes,” Mr. Gill told AlbertaPolitics.ca yesterday, never mind the law or the rights of workers. “Any kind of labour dispute anywhere in the country, she has weighed in.”
Enter the Canadian Union of Public Employees’ under-paid school members employed by the public and Catholic school boards in Fort McMurray. With negotiations at an impasse, about 1,000 educational assistants, school maintenance staff, librarians, IT workers and others voted to strike on Sept 12.
Give collective bargaining a chance to work? Not a chance! On Sept. 16, the day before the strike was scheduled to begin, the UCP Government stepped in with a Dispute Inquiry Board, a venerable provision of Alberta’s Labour Code used to prevent strikes that workers have a chance of winning, to force the workers to stay on the job for 30 days.
This, of course, immediately defuses the strike threat to the employers’ advantage.
“The Smith government has demonstrated its total disregard for workers, their rights, and their aspirations for improving the quality of education for Fort McMurray students,” a furious Mr. Gill said on the day the DIB was announced. “They can pre-empt tomorrow’s strike action, but they can’t destroy the solidarity that CUPE education workers have built in their preparations for this strike.”
If the Fort Mac workers issue another strike notice after the 30-day delay, Mr. Gill said yesterday, “I have no doubt” the government will try to find something else to block the workers.
“This government does not believe in workers’ rights, no matter what they say about supporting the little guy,” he concluded.
“That is why Alberta’s government has sent a letter continuing to call on the federal government to respond proactively and more effectively to labour disputes that have potential to create widespread damage to critical supply chains, as well as to our country’s economy and reputation as a reliable trading partner,”
But supporting armed, domestic terrorists, and generally proudly ignorant thugs shutting down critical border crossings costing hundreds of millions in international business and blackening our reputation as a “reliable trading partner” is A-OK with Dani Denial and the execrable UCP.
At this point, she may as well officially change her name to Danielle “Maurice Duplessis” Smith.
If Smith thinks strikes are bad for business, supply chains, etc there is an easy solution. When Unions present their bargaining demands, simply give them what they want and be done with it. Workers go on strike because that is the only way to force employers to negotiate and settle. If it weren’t for collective bargaining and the right to strike, people would still be working 6 days a week, no coffee breaks, no health care coverage, no work safe committes, etc. If you have a good look around, if a country doesn’t have a vibrant union movement it usually has a poor population with even worse working conditions. Perhaps we ought to get Smith a job in a garment factory in India for awhile or just a job in Calgary at a non union shop.
Unions are partly, not entirely, but partly responsible for the post-WWII prosperity, the largest period of economic growth the world has ever seen, with a lower gap between the rich and poor and sustained expansion of the safety net. The neoliberal agenda of the eighties was primarily devoted to weakening unions because they are so powerful. It worked – to the detriment of us all.
You don’t think ol’ Bootstrap Danielle knows what life is like as an employee in the private sector in Calgary? Like any good Kon, Smith built that better mousetrap and sold it to the world, collecting her stipends from the Fraser Institute, and the CBE, and Conrad Black and the Canadian Federation of Independent Business and finally the Alberta taxpayer. She has walked the walk as both a working person and a bold entrepreneur!
Let’s not forget that she was a scab in the 1999-2000 Calgary Herald strike that our host participated in back in the day.
There was an interview on CBC Wednesday morning with the head of a farmers group about the Vancouver strike, and all the other hits that have hurt farmers this year. I could see his point of view on much of what he said, but what stuck in my mind was his absolute conviction that all labour disputes were caused by workers without exception, because no company or corporation has ever or would ever offer anything but the best wages and benefits to their employees.
Oh, and it’s all Trudeaus fault because no liberal has been elected to any rural riding anywhere.
How can you reason with that mindset?
^this^
I am so very very tired of a small minority (of people, of the economy) thoughtlessly shill for the very power structures that are most to blame for than group’s challenges.
Y’all a farmer that gave up on collective rail car to market organization?
Yall insist on not carrying insurance for your farm workers?
Y’all wanna recoup your investment into your farm so you sell out to international corporation?
Y’all wanna keep using fossil fuels, not pay for crop insurance, and deny anthropogenic climate change?
Funny how that’s been working out for you.
It is interesting and to put this all into context, Smith was recently talking about rights for anti vaxers and gun owners. But I don’t recall her ever talking much about labour or workers rights.
It is true that when it comes to grain handling in particular, disruptions cause a lot of angst to rural Albertans especially at certain times of the year. So perhaps Smith is just reflecting that as a politician who has much of her remaining base of support there.
But none of this is a good sign as to how Smith and her UCP government will deal with upcoming labour issues in Alberta. Even when they can’t blame the Feds, such as in dealing with municipalities, Smith and the UCP still tends to take a very negative, confrontational and heavy handed approach.
So I feel any labour negotiations involving her government will probably be a bumpy ride. She may overplay her hand which could some public generate sympathy for the other side, but that doesn’t seem to have happened much for municipal leaders.
In any event, the current UCP government doesn’t seem that interested in negotiation when it can just use its power to be more heavy handed to get what it wants.
Intervene in events that cause wide spread economic impacts and supply chain disruptions? Like the illegal Coutts border blockade that Alberta’s TBA government condoned and encouraged? It is sad that Alberta voters allow the TBA government to abuse them but this is, apparently, what the low information Alberta voters want.
The UCP despises workers. They hate unionized workers even more. Marlaina loves to shower billionaires like Murray Edwards with taxpayer dollars, but the thought of a union worker getting a fair wage drives her insane. They even hate doctors, nurses and teachers. What I don’t understand is why so many Albertans vote for the UCP even when they must know that unless you are a CEO of a major oil company, you don’t matter to them.
There’s no secret. People have been dumbed down and inculcated with absurd superstitious beliefs about how the economy and society work. They are taught, and believe, that a dominance hierarchy predicated on property ownership is equitable and the only reasonable system. Doctors, for the most part, are still members of the class who toil. Fair game for our benevolent rent-seeking plutocracy.
Funny how Dingy Smith keeps talking about “staying in your lane” with respect to Federal or Municipal politics, yet she spouts off about each Federal labor dispute as if it was her own. This is very rich coming from a gang that supported the Coutts blockade not that long ago, although not surprising coming from the totally anti-union, anti-labor UCP.
Perhaps instead of barking at the Feds, she should resolve the issue of pay for doctors instead of sitting on her fat ass watching the world go by?
It will be interesting to see how the uptake in COVID, RSV and others, no doubt jamming hospitals even more will pan out as some provinces are re-instating masking. Dingy Smith and her you don’t need masks so you can infect and kill others policy will no doubt make hospital ER wait times even longer.
That is her point in stating people have the right not to be vaccinated. They already have that right. What she is saying is that she will then defend the unvaccinated their rights to ignore the consequences of their decision, the right to mingle unmasked and unprotected in public, the right to do so at work, the right to do so in restaurants, and the right to demand that everyone accept this and not hamper their lives while they risk others. And woe to those who protest the unvaccinated!
This is who they are battling:
The average wage of an education assistant (the shat upon, (literally), spat upon, shin-guard wearing, diaper changing ad hoc medical and mental health expert) in Alberta is $26,388 while the poverty line is $26,550, says the AEEC.’ https://lethbridgeherald.com/news/lethbridge-news/2024/02/08/education-support-workers-to-rally-for-better-pay/
Meanwhile parents call for help.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/edmonton.citynews.ca/2024/09/16/kids-with-disabilities-facing-long-waits-to-access-essential-services-advocates/amp/
Course if you don’t assess the little darlings they can’t qualify for assistance, can they? So clever!
Unless parents shell out for an assessment of course. Then they can turn to the groups that have the fun fundraisers instead of dreary union meetings. https://casamentalhealth.org/events/
Now coming to a public school near you! https://casamentalhealth.org/getting-help-2/casa-classrooms/
I caught an interview on CBC radio a few days ago with wheatgrowers VP Stephen Vandervolk which included several misstatements on his part, reflecting his (and many Albertans) anti-union bias. He spoke of a rail strike – of course, there wasn’t one, the workers were locked-out and then forced back to work. He went on to complain that, basically, the country is falling apart because unions have become far too powerful when, in fact, workers rights have been continually eroding for many decades. At no point did he mention or, apparently, consider the possibility that management/ownership had any responsibility in the dispute. In fact, he seemed to know very little about the dispute other than it being an inconvenience for him.
This seem to be the natural resting place for most Albertans: that the workers are greedy and uppity and have no right to ask for more and that they should all be grateful to our corporate benefactors.
A few weeks ago, in a government press release, Nate Horner, after declaring his respect for Alberta’s working people (he loves the poor!), immediately went on to disrespect them (at least the ones with membership in the AUPE), suggesting a 6% raise is completely unaffordable for the province that just posted a $2.9 billion dollar surplus. I find the Alberta is rather selective in determining what is and is not affordable. Apparently, we can afford a $350 million gift to Murray Edwards for his new arena, $4 million plus to relitigate our response to covid, $10 million for a propaganda war promoting an Alberta pension plan that nobody wants and none of us asked for, millions more paying severance to Alberta Health executives that didn’t need to be fired …. but an extra $1.50 an hour for the people who clean the hospitals and cook the food for patients? Never!
It’s not surprising, but it is appalling.
How I miss Joe 90 and the Thunderbirds. Swoop in and save earth from all types of peril.
And yet, open to any Youtube video with Smith making some pronouncement about anything, and the Comments is filled with cheers and endless support from Alberta voters! All workers, often parents themselves, who are impacted by her campaigns against workers, taxpayers, transit users, health system users……and they just don’t seem to get that her decisions do little to nothing for them. It’s like mass hypnosis and they’re all walking around clucking like chickens!
Debrah: Danielle Smith is also wasting money on a provincial media outlet, which we pay for. She lies on it. The people believe her. It’s hypocrisy to see these same people say that the CBC is a taxpayer funded propaganda arm of Justin Trudeau, when it isn’t.
Hello Emily,
Thanks for the information. So, “education” of unknown quality provided by what appears to be a for-profit company outside of a school. Shocking, but not surprising.
Without unions, things would be going backwards 100 years or more. But then again, Alberta has a backwards premier and government.