Alberta’s public sector unions risk alienating the public with hyperbolic rhetoric

Back on January 10th, the Alberta government, the Alberta Teachers Association (ATA), and the United Nurses of Alberta (UNA) had an arbitration on changes to wages end in stalemate. Neither the United Conservative Party (UCP) controlled government nor the two unions got what they wanted.

The Alberta government was pursuing a one time rollback of teacher salaries by 2% and nurse salaries by 3% for four years, to combat the growing debt and the budget deficits having been run for decades. The ATA and UNA were demanding that their members receive an increase in their wages by 2% for the next two years. 

The ATA represents 46,000 members, and the UNA represents 30,000 members making cuts and increases even of 2-3% have a heavy impact on the overall government expenditures

Both the ATA and UNA will go back into collective bargaining with the government at two later dates this year when their provincial collective bargaining agreements are set to expire.

Looking back at how things ended, at the very least all parties should be at least partially satisfied, the Alberta government may not have reduced the budget in this area, but they stopped the growth, and the ATA and UNA saved their members from a wage cut.

The imbalance coming out of this arbitration is the UCP government has come out relatively unscathed as nothing happened other than cuts having to be diverted elsewhere.

On the other hand, the ATA and UNA have potentially wounded their public reputations. In battling the government to stand still, they indulged in hyperbolic rhetoric, got in people’s faces and threw around a lot of personal and defamatory accusations.

Public sector unions, along with the New Democratic Party (NDP), have partnered on a lot of labour issues by travelling in the same car. They end up all getting in the same metaphorical crashes. The problem here is their collective action facilitates radical rhetoric becoming the norm for the union membership and advocates.

Back on November 30th at the UCP annual general meeting (AGM), the unions came out in a collective protest made up of various members of associations including the Alberta Union of Public Employees (AUPE), ATA, UNA, Calgary Union of Public Employees (CUPE) and even the Calgary Board of Education (CBE) to protest cuts made by the UCP government, in particular, the plan to eliminate 500 nursing jobs in three years.

Protests like what occurred at the UCP AGM and many other events do not ingratiate the public to the union’s plight.