The Alberta Teachers’ Association

A major focus of the Alberta Teachers’ Association since its inception has been to ensure that teachers receive compensation that reflects their duties, obligations, preparation and experience and that teachers enjoy conditions of professional practice that allow them to do their best work. This was initially reflected in Association efforts to seek improvements to the legislated minimum salary for teachers in Alberta. This minimum, $840 per annum, in many communities became the maximum, and in frequent instances boards paid well below the legislated minimum salary.

The Association (then the Alliance) began efforts in 1921 to raise the minimum to $1,200. This policy goal was reduced to $1,000 by the Annual General Meeting in 1927, and the Association continued to advocate for changes to the minimum salary until 1943. During this time, the Association was unsuccessful at raising salaries—the economic conditions of the Great Depression did not help, nor did the Second World War.

The purchasing power of a teacher’s salary in the early 1940s was much less than the purchasing power in 1921, and these circumstances were only made worse in the 1930s when the UFA government granted exemptions so school boards could reduce yearly salaries to $700 in some instances. The Association’s approach through this period was to press the provincial government to establish a higher legislated salary minimum; this would have a significant positive impact on the profession.

In 1941, the William Aberhart government amended the Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act to make clear that the act applied to teachers and made collective bargaining obligatory with penalties for employers who refused to engage in bargaining. The amendments also provided for a non-binding conciliation process, with the referral of disputes to a conciliation commissioner and an appeal to an impartial board of arbitrators.

The School Act was also amended to allow teachers to negotiate a salary schedule applicable to all teachers employed by a school board. However, the meaning of “salary schedule” was not entirely clear, nor was the meaning of “collective bargaining,” and there was no requirement enacted in legislation for boards to reach an agreement with teachers before adopting a salary schedule. In his 1942 report to the ATA’s Annual General Meeting, general secretary John Barnett outlined the changes made to the School Act, and expressed hope that the legislated bargaining process would improve the Association’s ability to address teachers’ economic circumstances.

Across Alberta, in the early 1940s, collective bargaining commenced between local teachers and their school boards. In some instances, this was a school board consultation exercise, and in other instances it was much more formalized. By 1942, there were clear legal options available to teachers to force a resolution of their disputes at the bargaining table, including a conciliation process and the right to strike.

The Association’s commitment was to local bargaining, with the involvement of the provincial office if the local teachers requested the assistance.

The Association’s support for striking teachers was formalized in the course of the 1942 dispute involving the Vegreville school division. The dispute was referred to an arbitration board (the recommendations of an arbitration board were non-binding on either party), and the teachers accepted the majority award, but the school board rejected it.

By a majority of 55 to three, teachers voted to strike at a time identified by the local executive. The strike, which lasted 33 days (more than a month and a half), provoked the Association to assess its entire membership $1 per month, and this money paid the teachers on strike at the rate of the arbitration award, less other earnings during the strike. With the help of the deputy minister of education, the dispute was ultimately resolved and teachers won most of what they had sought.

It was an important early experience in collective bargaining. The Association would bargain locally and there would be provincewide support, including financial support, to obtain local goals.

Pushing for Provincial Bargaining

The first effort to move to provincial bargaining, from the perspective of members, was proposed in 1944, but teachers preferred to retain local bargaining because local teachers were better able to deal with local conditions. However, school boards and the government examined the bargaining model on several occasions with a perspective to consider provincial bargaining.

Pushed by the Alberta School Trustees’ Association, the Ernest Manning government commenced a review of bargaining practices, and in 1957 the government named G. M. Blackstock QC to head a royal commission into the feasibility of establishing a provincial salary scale for teachers. After biased treatment at the first day of the commission’s hearings, the Association withdrew, boycotting the commission entirely. The boycott itself created quite a commotion, and Provincial Executive Council called a special meeting of local presidents to provide background and justify the decision to local leadership and members. Teachers supported Council and continued to call for local bargaining.

The Blackstock Commission reported in January 1958, calling for a provincial salary scale with capacity for regional differences and a compulsory arbitration process. The Association rejected the recommendations entirely, and in the spring sitting of the legislature, Minister of Education A. O. Alberg announced that the government would not be introducing legislation to implement any of the commission’s recommendations. There would be no loss of the right to strike and no provincial bargaining.

A strike of teachers in Strathcona in 1963 lasted seven days, inappropriately involved some government officials and produced a fair amount of heat, and as a result the Manning government established a committee, by resolution of the legislature in 1964, to review procedures for collective bargaining between school trustees and teachers. Chaired by future education minister R. H. McKinnon, the committee held 13 public hearings across the province and made a series of recommendations in 1965, including that teachers continue to have the right to strike. Again, Association policy continued to support the right to strike and local bargaining, and backed it up with provincial support.

For decades, school boards have had the legal right to band together, establishing school authority associations to bargain with the Association. The school authority associations have effectively acted as employer cartels that then led to the further banding together of local bargaining units, and collective agreements established across a wider region of Alberta. Bargaining was often more difficult in these regional groups, and the Association routinely asked school boards to bargain locally.

Legislation Produces Profound Impact

In 1994, the government amended legislation to, for practical purposes, remove the taxation authority of school boards. The province would now set the local mill rate for education and collect the revenue. The funding, along with support from the province’s general revenue, would be allocated to school boards through per capita grants.

Overnight, the province’s school boards could no longer adjust local taxation rates to address local priorities, and the expectation shifted to managing the system with the resources provided to each school board by the province.

This very significant shift had a profound impact on local bargaining. This impact was further augmented with the amalgamation of school jurisdictions across the province, creating administrative efficiencies. With larger administrative units, there was no need for school boards to engage in regional bargaining through school authority associations, ensuring local bargaining across the province.

But the trustees were no longer in a position to resolve funding issues or to manage community wishes by adjusting the local mill rate. If there were insufficient funds, decisions would need to be made at the local level. School trustees proclaimed that it wasn’t their fault; they were only managing the system as best they could. The province redirected inquiries to the local school board, noting that there were large grants paid to school boards and it was simply about local priorities.

Through the 1990s, school boards were starved of funding and teachers’ frustrations at the bargaining table continued to grow. Teachers were very public with their concerns. A huge rally was convened on the grounds of the Alberta legislature in October 1997, attended by 20,000 teachers seeking increased education funding. The continuing failure of government to respond lead to the largest strike in Alberta history in February 2002. At its peak, more than 22,000 teachers were on strike to achieve compensation that reflected the profession’s important work, conditions of professional practice that would help teachers do their best work and support to recruit and retain beginning teachers.

The 2002 strike, in particular, crystalized in teachers’ minds that the bargaining model was no longer in sync with the realities of educational governance in Alberta. As one teacher said at the 2002 Annual Representative Assembly, they were tired of talking to the monkey; they wanted to talk to the organ grinder. School board trustees could not control the levers of funding in any meaningful way; the province was the sole source of education funding and had to be at the table, in the view of more and more teachers. The historic shift in Association policy came in that year when teachers voted to take all necessary steps to institute a bi-level bargaining model, with government at the table. Association policy has been updated since 2002, but the clear intent is no different from 2002:

5.A.51 The Alberta Teachers’ Association supports a collective bargaining framework for its members wherein

1. matters acceptable to the Association are negotiated at a central table between the Association representing its members and the Government of Alberta as financier of public education,

2. matters acceptable to the Association are negotiated in separate collective agreements between the Association and each employing jurisdiction,

3. provisions governing teacher employment contained within the School Act are retained in that Act and

4. provisions of the Labour Relations Code and the Employment Standards Code continue to apply to teachers.

This is not a provincial bargaining scheme, but rather a bargaining structure by which there is an opportunity to resolve, at a provincial table, funding and other issues of concern to Alberta’s teachers. Given that teachers are not employees of the province and continue to be employees of school boards, it is especially important that there be discussions at the local level and agreement reached with each employing school board.

Alberta’s Commission on Learning, created as a response to the 2002 strike, made a number of recommendations on bargaining, including that the Alberta School Boards Association become the school employers’ bargaining authority in a provincial bargaining structure. The commission also proposed that there be limits on what could be bargained, with collective agreements setting out little more than salary and benefits. The Klein government did not take action to implement this bargaining model, which the Association strongly opposed.

Since 2001, there has also been a greater involvement of the provincial Association in local bargaining. After all, the provincial Association holds the bargaining certificates for its bargaining units. The Association’s General Bylaws require the provincial Association to conclude collective agreements. Following local ratification by members of the bargaining unit, the agreements must be ratified by the executive secretary. Given the complexities of bargaining and the expanded interconnectedness of bargaining issues, the provincial Association has increased its role in local bargaining, including the formal assignment of Teacher Welfare staff to each bargaining unit.

While its approach to bargaining has changed over almost a century, the Association remains committed to achieving compensation levels that are commensurate with teacher duties, obligations, education and experience, and conditions of professional practice that allow teachers to do their best work.

Dr. Gordon Thomas is the executive secretary of the Alberta Teachers’ Association.