A teachers’ strike or a lockout is looming in Alberta just days before the start of school. The conflict between the province and union is coming to a head as the government mandates book restrictions in school libraries and implements sweeping rules around students’ pronouns and transgender identity.
Contract negotiations between the Alberta Teachers’ Association and the province’s bargaining team have reached a significant impasse, said Education and Childcare Minister Demetrios Nicolaides. He characterized the union as “manipulative” after it declined to accept an offer during mediated talks this week.
“Parents should be furious that union leaders are gambling with their kids’ future,” Mr. Nicolaides told reporters in Calgary, joining Alberta’s Finance Minister Nate Horner on Friday to emphasize that the province cannot afford to pay teachers more than a proposed 12-per-cent salary increase over four years.
“I don’t see that offer changing,” Mr. Horner added, describing a ballooning deficit of $6.5-billion in the coming year, which is $1.3-billion more than the previous provincial projections.
Late Friday, the province’s negotiating team told The Globe and Mail it is ready to lock out the teachers, having voted on the issue ahead of a possible strike. A lockout is essentially an employer’s version of a strike, suspending work to exert pressure for a settlement.
Alberta to ban books deemed sexually explicit from school libraries
Alberta to hold public consultation on which books should be banned from school libraries
Scott McCormack, a spokesperson with the Teachers’ Employer Bargaining Association, said in a statement it would only utilize a lockout as a reactionary response: “My hope is that TEBA will not have to use it, but expect a lockout may be necessary if it appears that union tactics could harm students and families.”
But Jason Schilling, president of the Alberta Teachers’ Association, said his union members should not be held responsible for the province’s “shifting” fiscal concerns, especially when they are being asked to perform “new, complex, sensitive tasks.”
“Teachers are now responsible for sorting and culling not only library books, but also the books that they’ve accumulated in their own classrooms, often paid for with their own money,” he told reporters in Edmonton.
“Navigating new protocols around gender identity has caused anxiety amongst the membership,” he added. “The expectations have grown, class sizes continue to soar, and the pay has barely moved.”
Over the last few years, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s government has developed and enacted multiple measures that have limited gender-affirming treatment for transgender youth and affected their participation in sports.
Many of those controversial moves are being rolled out this fall.
As of September, new amendments to the Education Act dictate that ministerial approval is required before the presentation of learning resources related to gender identity, sexual orientation or human sexuality. Parents must opt in before students under 16 are taught about those subjects, while students’ preferred pronouns and names cannot be used in school until their guardians are notified and have consented.
Separately, Alberta issued an order this summer to restrict books it deems to be sexually explicit, directing school libraries to remove the material by October and prohibit students from accessing it. The government, however, did not provide any additional funding to support those policies, nor did it provide a definitive list of books to be banned.
As teachers prepared for a new school year this week, the difficulty of interpreting and following those orders around books and students’ personal identity became a crucial concern.
The Edmonton Public School Board on Friday verified a list of more than 200 books it would need to remove under the new measures – including classics such The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou – that are now qualified as explicit sexual content, forbidden from kindergarten to Grade 12 students.
“As a result of the ministerial order, several excellent books will be removed from our shelves,” Julie Kusiek, chair of the Edmonton board said in a statement.
Ms. Atwood reacted on social media, telling kids to get a copy of her book now, “before they have public book burnings of it.”
But the Premier described Edmonton’s list as “vicious compliance.”
At an unrelated event in Calgary, Ms. Smith played slides for reporters with images from four graphic novels that Alberta has previously cited as examples of sexually explicit content. (Authors of those novels, each of which depict coming-of-age or LGBTQ subjects, have countered that their work has been taken out of context.)
“I think we need to exercise a little judgment here,” Ms. Smith said, adding that if schools need the government to “hold their hand through the process to identify what kind of materials are appropriate,” it would do so.
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith says Edmonton's public school board has gone over the top in complying with new rules banning books with sexual content. Smith says the school listed books the policy had no intention of targeting.
The Canadian Press
Mr. Schilling said the book ban and the discrepancy it has caused encapsulates just how much the workload for teachers has increased in the province.
“If the government is going to put something on the plate for teachers to do, then the government should be supplying the resources, including money,” he said.
He added that teachers’ wages have only risen by 5.75 per cent over the past decade, which is not in line with inflation or on par with the Canadian market.
While the union has not yet issued a 72-hour notice to strike, its nearly 51,000 members are willing to walk off the job when needed, Mr. Schilling said. He declined to say whether the notice could be served over the weekend.
The education and finance ministers said the province welcomes the union back to the bargaining table, but they are not willing to rule out the use of back-to-work legislation. (Ottawa employed such legislation in the recent Air Canada strike, but the union, in that case, defied the order.)
They also refused to say whether they would move their October deadline for the removal of books should a strike occur.
“We have tools at our disposal,” Mr. Horner said. “So do they.”