Alberta Finance Minister Nate Horner continues to taunt the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees with an offer for its civil service bargaining unit that is lower than that achieved by other unionized public-sector workers.
In a provocative statement published Friday on the official Government of Alberta website, Mr. Horner accused AUPE of lying to its own members by suggesting to them their recent 90-per-cent-plus strike vote could push the United Conservative Party Government to sweeten its offer.
In his statement, Mr. Horner also threatened to lock most of the 23,500 AUPE members out of their jobs. (A few thousand, which both sides have agreed are essential, would still be legally required to show up for work.)
As I wrote in this space after AUPE President Guy Smith announced the bargaining unit’s mandate from 80 per cent of the bargaining unit’s members on May 13, an offer of four years with 3-per-cent annual pay increases could be what it takes to get things moving toward a settlement.
After all, this is what the government emphasizes in the agreement public-sector health care employers reached with the United Nurses of Alberta, and which the nurse union’s members overwhelmingly ratified on April 2.
Instead, judging from the belligerent tone of Mr. Horner’s statement Friday and the fact the government hasn’t moved off its pay offer of 3 per cent, 3 per cent, 2.75 per cent and 2.75 per cent over four years, which AUPE found insulting 10 days earlier and obviously still does, it would be tempting to conclude the UCP Government wants a strike.
One hopes that is not so. It would be pretty dumb. Nevertheless, there are sure to be people in the UCP who think precipitating a strike could pay off if they impressed the public by acting tough and then blamed the union for the resulting mess. That’s been known to work for right-wing governments before.
But it would be a pretty bold move for a government that is already divided internally, picks fights right and left with other Canadian governments, and is pushing for a separation referendum that could badly hurt all of Canada, all the while trying to suppress a major corruption scandal, dismantling public health care, and failing to deal effectively with a policy-promoted measles epidemic.
Given all that, we should hope that if Mr. Horner’s game of chicken fails to move the union, as seems likely, the government will conclude it needs to sweeten the pot a little more.
If things go pear-shaped, it probably wouldn’t take much to push this into a strike. Since their strike vote, AUPE members can walk out any time with only 72-hours’ notice. In addition, in early May, the government, which in the case of this bargaining unit negotiates directly with the union, applied for and received permission to lock out AUPE’s members in the event of an impasse. So the government could also theoretically pull the trigger after 72 hours’ notice.
About the best you can say about a government that allowed that to happen is that it would be an ambitious strategy! Many would conclude, though, that it was more evidence of sheer incompetence on a scale not witnessed in Alberta since the 1930s, and maybe not even then.
At any rate, Mr. Horner started his statement with the traditional hypocritical tip o’ the hat to the public employees the union represents, while complaining about their union. The government “values and appreciates the hard work” of the civil service, he insisted, before getting down to the nasty stuff.
“Unfortunately, union leadership has not been forthright with its members and sold the idea that a successful strike vote would provide more leverage at the bargaining table,” Mr. Horner went on. As history shows, though, that’s pretty much how collective bargaining is supposed to work, and usually does.
The strength of the union strike vote does suggest that without a deal AUPE could hold out long enough to force the government to go to the Legislature to order the strikers back to work – which would, of course, require them to answer to the Opposition in the House for overriding the workers’ constitutionally protected right to strike.
Independent Lethbridge-based journalist Kim Siever provided a line-by-line analysis Friday of what he called “yet another anti-worker message from yet another neoliberal finance minister.”
On his AlbertaWorker.ca website, Mr. Siever pointed to the government’s insulting initial offer, the way it describes 11.5 per cent as “about 12 per cent,” how it terms its bargaining position an “offer” and the union’s as a “demand,” and its little fib about the size of other Alberta wage settlements. (Some are a lot bigger than Mr. Horner claims.)
In response to Mr. Horner’s hypothetical complaint about how if every other public sector worker got what AUPE is seeking, that would be enough to pay for “two years of funding for kindergarten to Grade 12,” Mr. Siever makes the excellent point that Alberta’s irresponsible decision to set taxes so low we can’t keep the lights on when the price of oil drops is a choice.
Mr. Horner’s statement concluded with his threat and a patronizing suggestion: “If AUPE leadership continues to be unreasonable and unrealistic, the situation could escalate to a strike by government workers or a government-initiated lockout. Neither option is desirable. I encourage AUPE leadership to come back to the table with realistic aspirations. Contingency planning is ongoing to support core government services in the event of a strike or a lockout.”
The government and the union are scheduled to meet with a mediator in June. Perhaps the government should come back to the table with a realistic offer.
With close to 100,000 total members in health care, education, boards, agencies and municipalities in addition to the civil service, AUPE is the largest union in Alberta and one of the dozen largest in Canada.
Time for the unions to coordinate a general strike, in my opinion.