About 750,000 Alberta students enter third week of no school amid teachers strike

A labour relations professor is criticizing the Alberta government’s threat to legislate striking teachers back to work as about 750,000 students enter a third week of cancelled classes on Monday.

Jason Foster, of Alberta’s Athabasca University, says the government’s plan could create more problems down the road.

“So instead of trying to resolve the conflict, they (could use) a get-out-of-jail-free card to just bring an end to this whole thing,” he said in a phone interview Sunday.

“Governments do this because it solves their immediate political problem. But what it does is it just creates more problems. It means that the issues and concerns of the teachers go unresolved. They feel even less respected, less heard.”

Premier Danielle Smith said last week teachers can “fully expect” to be ordered back to work if the strike is still on by Oct. 27, when members of the legislative assembly reconvene.

“We think that three weeks is about the limit of what students can handle before we’d start seeing irreparable harm,” she said Friday.

Around 2,500 schools were shuttered after 51,000 teachers walked off the job on Oct. 6.

The Alberta Teachers’ Association and the government have been see-sawing over a contract since then, with the main sticking points being wages, classroom sizes and support for students with complex needs.

Finance Minister Nate Horner said students are facing the consequences of the union’s rejection of a previous government offer and its recent refusal to go through enhanced mediation and reopen schools Monday.

“Students have missed out on valuable learning, sports activities, personal development, social interaction, and more,” he said on Friday.

“Their education and wellbeing are at the heart of everything we do, and next steps will be focused on getting kids back into the classroom as soon as possible.”

In the last provincewide teachers strike in 2002, Foster said the government also ordered teachers back to work.

Then-premier Ralph Klein also formed a commission after the order, to study the state of Alberta’s education system and offer recommendations to government.

Smith said last week her government wants to form a commission on education when the provincewide strike is over, too.

But Foster said the recommendations the earlier commission gave, including class-size guidelines, were never implemented and are still an issue in this round of bargaining.

ATA president Jason Schilling was asked in a Sept. 30 interview with The Canadian Press whether teachers would defy a back-to-work order.

“All options would be on the table at that point,” he responded.

The strike has strained Alberta businesses, ended vital school food programs for students, and left students preparing for university applications stressed.

The online lessons the Alberta government has curated for students to use amid the strike has also been criticized as being incoherent and for creating more confusion.

The Alberta government’s bargaining committee and the teachers’ association haven’t formally met since the Oct. 6 walkout.

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The ATA said Sunday it remains “open to meeting with (the government) to bargain in good faith on the proposals we provided to them.”

Horner’s office did not immediately respond to questions about bargaining on Sunday.

Horner has said the union has “shot for the moon” with its latest proposal and the government can’t afford it. He said it requires the province spend $2 billion more than the $2.6 billion it set aside over four years in its last offer.

The government offered a 12-per-cent salary increase over four years and a promise to hire 3,000 more teachers.

Last Friday, a government letter that invited the union for enhanced arbitration said the teachers and government were “extremely far apart” and the dispute is causing an “unacceptable state of affairs.”

It said enhanced mediation would last a month, after which the mediator would put non-binding terms to both parties for review.

Schilling called the mediation proposal insulting as it vetoed discussion of caps on classroom sizes. He didn’t rule out the possibility of ending the strike if the province changes the terms of mediation.

He also said teachers aren’t willing to back down on the demands they’ve made since rejecting the government’s previous offer.

The union’s counteroffer includes wages that keep up with inflation and address class-size caps.

Teachers say they regularly have more than 30 students in their classrooms and are stretched too thin.

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