PV Alberta Bureau
Provincial government employees held strike-readiness rallies before settling at the last minute. Healthcare workers have been similarly rallying in preparation. And with their province-wide strike which began October 6 – the first in Alberta’s history – the Alberta Teachers Association (ATA) moves into the lead of the wider struggle to defend the quality of life of working people in Alberta.
Thousands celebrated World Teacher Day on October 5 at rallies across Alberta, including thousands in both Calgary and at the Alberta legislature in Edmonton, in support of the ATA which voted 89 percent to reject the government’s offer.
Teachers’ pay raises have been less than inflation for more than a decade. Class sizes, increasingly complex student needs, and other work conditions that affect the quality of education have also gone unresolved.
Teachers are demanding 5,000 new teachers be hired to reduce class sizes, which have gone far above the standards recommended in 2003 after a previous teachers’ strike. The government’s strategy concerning overcrowding was to stop collecting detailed data about class sizes in 2019.
Government plans for new school construction have not kept pace with population increases, but they have found the money to divert into increased funding to build private schools. Private schools in Alberta are already funded by the public at the highest rate of any province in Canada – at 70 percent of the rate for public schools, per capita.
The government’s underfunding of public education is in line with its long-term general hostility to education. They have massively slashed post-secondary budgets. In a thinly veiled collaboration with fundamentalist extremists, they spent several years working on a new curriculum with such features as glorification of tar sands development and denial of dinosaurs. They have recently tried their hand at book-banning – a move which embarrassingly backfired after a demonstration of “malicious compliance” by the Edmonton School Board.
During the rallies on October 5, Alberta Federation of Labour president Gil McGowan wrote on social media: “On the eve of the biggest strike in Alberta history, tens of thousands of teachers and their supporters are rallying in multiple communities around the province. Danielle Smith provoked this. She will come to regret it. We’re not just fighting underfunding and union busting; we’re fighting a MAGA-style war on public education (and the well-rounded and thoughtful citizens public education creates)!”
The Communist Party – Alberta has issued a statement in full support of Alberta teachers, and is calling on all workers – both public and private sector – to rally in support of teachers’ living standards and children’s education standards.
[Photo of rally in Lethbridge: ATA X]
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