The Alberta Teachers Association (ATA) is accusing the provincial government of bad faith bargaining during recent contract negotiations, which ended with the government legislating an end to the nearly month-long strike by the province’s 51,000 teachers.
During a press conference in Edmonton on Friday, ATA President Jason Schilling said the government now claims the additional teachers it promised to hire during contract negotiations were already included in the 2025 budget.
“Throughout the bargaining process, the government repeatedly promised 3,000 new teachers over the next three years,” said Schilling. “They made that claim in media releases, in public statements, and on the floor of the legislature (and) ministers Nate Horner and Demetrios Nicolaides issued a joint statement on Aug. 28th that includes the sentences. They used it to create an illusion of significant new investment in classrooms.”
Schilling says the additional teachers were supposed to be hired “above and beyond natural attrition, inflation and student growth.”
But now, after legislating teachers back to work, Schilling is accusing the government of backing away from that plan.
“It is a misrepresentation that affected the decisions made at the bargaining table and the understanding of Albertans,” said Schilling.
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He says the ATA has filed a complaint with the Alberta Labour Relations Board, accusing the Teachers’ Employer Bargaining Association (TEBA) of unfair and bad faith bargaining.
Sixty-one grievances have also been filed, one for every bargaining unit across the province, regarding TEBA’s and the employers’ interpretation of the Recruitment of Teachers Letter of Understanding.
Schilling has accused the government of Alberta of attempting to drive a wedge between teachers and the ATA after government officials publicly questioned the association’s motives during negotiations.
“This is not simply a misunderstanding. It is a breach of good faith,” said Schilling. “It is a misrepresentation that affected decisions made at the bargaining table and the understanding of Albertans.”
Jason Foster, professor of labour relations at Athabasca University, describes the unfair bargaining complaint as a reflection of the anger teachers are feeling and an attempt to hold the government accountable.
“I think because not only are they angry that they got ordered back to work with (the) notwithstanding clause, but then after it started to come out that the 3,000 teachers was kind of already baked into the budget, I can imagine that was really frustrating to hear, to think they basically got duped by the government negotiators,” said Foster.
Among the remedies the ATA is seeking is a declaration that the 1,000 new teachers must be funded and hired over and above the teachers Schilling claims the government now says were already included in the 2025 budget.
The ATA is has also launched a court challenge, on constitutional grounds, against the government’s back-to-work legislation, saying it violates their right to freedom of association and freedom of expression.
Unlike a potentially lengthy constitutional challenge, Foster said, the complaints of unfair bargaining could be dealt with quite quickly by the Labour Relations Board, possibly within a few weeks.
Asked for a response to the ATA’s complaints, a spokesperson for the Minister of Treasury Board and Finance provided Global News with a short, written statement.
It reads: “We understand the ATA has filed a challenge regarding hiring commitments. We will respond to the challenge in due course, and we look forward to this matter being resolved. Out of respect legal process, we have no further comment at this time.”
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