Alvin Finkel

Huge rallies of teachers, students, parents, and other supporters of the Alberta Teachers’ Association( ATA) marked the strike. Polls found that a large majority of Albertans supported teachers’ demands for higher pay, smaller classrooms, and adequate staffing to support complex students.

In the previous decade, teachers’ pay rose six per cent while inflation increased thirty per cent. Government cost containment efforts resulted in growing class sizes, cuts in educational assistants, and increases in student violence directed at teachers. Teachers wanted their contracts to include partial restoration of wages lost to inflation, maximum classroom sizes, and commitments to dealing with complex students. The government rejected these demands.

On October 29, the government passed the Back to School Act, which ordered teachers to return to the classroom, and imposed its last pre-strike offer. Because a Supreme Court ruling in 2015 declared the right to strike a human right, the government invoked the“ notwithstanding clause” that allows governments to override some protections of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

While polls suggest around fifty per cent of Albertans found the use of the notwithstanding clause inappropriate( compared with thirtythree per cent who found it appropriate), many Albertans are left wondering: was the strike worthwhile? Time will tell, but history predicts yes, though perhaps only in the long term.

Long Lasting Impacts

Crippling inflation during the First World War, followed by high unemployment and government cutbacks to tame wartime debt, caused strikes for union recognition, better wages, and job security. Government-initiated police repression crushed the Winnipeg General Strike and solidarity strikes, including month-long general strikes in Edmonton and Calgary in 1919. Workers won no immediate gains. But in the aftermath, union activists founded labour parties that promoted both workers’ rights to unionize and social insurance programs.

Memories of that activism, along with revised militancy, caused the federal government to change course during and after the Second World War. They imposed price controls, made collective bargaining contracts legally enforceable documents, and made full employment and social insurance their major post-war priorities. The militancy of 1919 yielded dramatic improvements, however belated.

What is the notwithstanding clause?

The notwithstanding clause was created as part of the 1982 Constitution Act and gives the federal and provincial governments the ability to override certain sections of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms for a period of five years, after which point, the use of the clause must be renewed.

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