In 2019 the United Conservative Party was elected on a promise to “get Albertans back to work.” Then-premier Jason Kenney’s job-creation plan hinged on a one-third reduction in corporate taxes and the elimination of so-called red tape. Over the next three years, Kenney and a series of short-lived labour ministers rolled back workers’ rights, transferred hundreds of millions of dollars from workers to employers, and damaged, perhaps irreparably, Alberta’s public sector.
In the end Alberta achieved very modest job growth during Kenney’s time, roughly the same as comparable jurisdictions. The more notable outcome—and I’d argue the UCP’s actual agenda all along—has been a significant shift in wealth from workers to employers by cheapening labour. Alberta may have slightly more jobs now than when the UCP took office, but it also has more jobs that are worse: that pay less, to workers with fewer rights, toiling under worse conditions.
Illustration by Gerry Rasmussen
Kenney began his attack on worker rights by targeting teenagers. In June 2019 the UCP cut the minimum wage for most workers under 18 from $15 an hour to $13. Kenney’s rationale was that a lower minimum wage would mean more jobs. “Thirteen dollars an hour is a heck of a lot more than zero bucks an hour, and that’s the option here,” he said. There was (and still is) no evidence that lowering wages creates employment for youth. The only indisputable outcome was more money in the pockets of low-wage employers and less for students, many of whom were saving to afford rapidly rising post-secondary tuitions prompted by government funding cuts.
The UCP also left the regular minimum wage to languish at $15 an hour during Kenney’s time in office, despite the cost of living rising over that period by about 8 per cent. Some 300,000 workers, mostly adult women who have permanent and long-term jobs with large companies, bore the costs of this policy, while the beneficiaries were, again, low-wage employers.
Kenney also took a run at injured workers, reducing their workers’ compensation benefits by half a billion dollars over five years. This included capping wage-loss benefits and de-indexing them from the cost of living, removing an employer’s obligation to rehire injured workers, and radically reducing the likelihood of workers receiving compensation for psychological conditions such as PTSD.
According to one-time UCP labour minister Jason Copping, employers told him that “rising costs” put the Workers’ Compensation Board’s (WCB’s) “future state of sustainability in doubt.” If this is what employers told Copping, it is simply untrue. In 2020 Alberta’s accident fund was fully funded, with $13.7-billion in assets. Indeed, there has been so much excess cash in the accident fund that the WCB has since 2018 subsidized employer premiums by over $1-billion.
A different way to control workers’ compensation costs would be to reduce the number of workplace injuries. In late 2020 Copping introduced significant changes to Alberta occupational health and safety (OHS) rules, which he framed as “improving safety for Alberta workers and making workplaces safer.” In reality these changes gutted the powers of workplace health and safety committees to make workplaces safer—including eliminating the requirement for regular inspections—and made it harder for workers to refuse unsafe work.
Michael Hughes, a spokesperson for United Food and Commercial Workers Local 401, told the Edmonton Journal that the right to refuse unsafe work was key to workers protecting themselves during massive COVID outbreaks at the Cargill and JBS meatpacking plants. “We feel it may have actually saved people’s lives.” He said the Kenney government was reckless to weaken that right.
At the same time, the government cut enforcement. In the UCP era the number of compliance orders written by OHS inspectors to employers, directing them to remedy unsafe work, fell by 49.6 per cent, while the number of tickets written for violations dropped by 93.4 per cent. Charges laid against employers and fines levied also declined. Not surprisingly, laxer rules and phantasmal enforcement resulted in the number of serious injuries rising by 16 per cent during Kenney’s tenure.
Finally, the UCP made changes to Alberta’s rules about overtime that allow employers to impose so-called agreements on the averaging of weekly work hours. These “agreements” allow employers to delay the payment of overtime premiums. Minister Copping nonsensically framed these changes as “expanding choice for workers” when in fact the choice of whether or not to pay overtime is granted solely to employers.
The upshot of the UCP’s overtime changes is that employers can require employees to work up to 208 overtime hours per year (roughly five weeks of additional work) without having to pay any overtime premiums. Given that an estimated $3.3-billion in overtime was paid in 2018, the UCP’s changes transferred untold hundreds of millions of dollars from workers to their bosses.
These changes affected a broad swath of Albertans. But Kenney and the UCP particularly targeted public-sector workers. This began in June of 2019, when the UCP legislatively delayed wage-increase arbitrations (affecting 180,000 workers) that had been negotiated with the former NDP government. Public-sector workers—mostly women—and their unions had viewed the arbitrations as a quid pro quo for agreeing to a two-year wage freeze (2017–2019) and saw the delay as a betrayal. During the legislative debate over this bill, Kenney handed out bright-pink earplugs to his caucus. This juvenile behaviour set the tone for the years that followed.
The government rationalized the delay to give it time to get a handle on the province’s finances, which it characterized as “worse than expected.” The UCP’s assertion that the province’s coffers were bare did not, however, stop it from handing business owners approximately $4.5-billion in tax cuts over four years (tax cuts that did not result in meaningful job growth). In the interim the Kenney government set out to justify draconian legislative changes that would drive deep cuts to public-sector wages.
In September 2019 Kenney’s hand-picked panel on Alberta’s finances recommended cutting public-sector spending. It urged the government to erode the wages and benefits of workers who deliver public services (including doctors), either at the bargaining table or through legislation. The UCP wasted no time in complying and, before the year was out, passed the Ensuring Fiscal Sustainability Act, 2019. Tucked at the back of this omnibus bill was the Public Sector Employers Act, whereby the government gave itself the authority to impose a bargaining mandate on all public-sector employers, such as school boards, post-secondary institutions and Alberta Health Services. Employers were furthermore required keep their mandate a secret from the unions during bargaining, and the government gave itself a veto over any settlement that strayed from the mandate.
Illustration by Gerry Rasmussen.
Critics predicted these mandates would make collective bargaining a hollow and fettered process. Unions would go through the motions of bargaining with the employer at the table. Meanwhile, the real decisions would be made by the government in the back room, safely insulated from any consequences. This analysis turned out to be spot on.
The omnibus bill also gave the UCP the power to unilaterally cancel its province-wide agreement on physician compensation, which it did in February 2020. This move was unprecedented in this province; the Alberta Medical Association called it “outrageous.” The government then imposed a new agreement containing significant rollbacks in physician fees and other rights. Physicians were furious, and backlash from doctors and the public alike resulted in the government partially reversing course. After two years of bargaining (including a tentative settlement that was rejected by doctors in 2021), a new agreement was ratified in September 2022 with a below-inflation increase in compensation. In the interim, many doctors left the province, and many Albertans, particularly outside Edmonton and Calgary, faced difficulty accessing family MDs or specialists.
Finally, before going to the table with virtually every unionized public-sector worker in the province, the UCP also made significant changes to Alberta’s labour laws. The Restoring Balance in Alberta’s Workplaces Act was passed in the summer of 2020. In addition to making it easier for employers to thwart workers’ efforts to unionize (under the predictably misleading assertion that the UCP was “restoring workplace democracy”), this Act severely restricted picketing activities during a strike or lockout.
When collective bargaining reaches an impasse, workers can go on strike. The purpose of a strike is to apply economic pressure on an employer to agree to contract provisions that workers also can accept. Workers do so by withholding their labour (which disrupts operations) as well as by picketing. Picketing lets workers dissuade potential customers from doing business with a struck employer. Picketing can also stop or delay traffic into and out of a workplace, which makes it more difficult for the employer to carry on operations. The UCP altered Alberta’s Labour Relations Code to prohibit strikers from obstructing or impeding anyone who wishes to cross a picket line.
Workers sometimes also engage in what is known as secondary picketing in front of businesses owned by their employer’s customers or suppliers or in a public space. The UCP’s changes now require picketers to receive prior permission from the Labour Board to picket anywhere but at their regular place of work. And the UCP’s Critical Infrastructure Defence Act gives the government the power to prohibit picketing in certain public places, including sidewalks, boulevards and roadways.
“These new rules have rendered legal picketing ineffective and effective picketing illegal,” said Susan Cake, assistant professor of human resources and labour relations at Athabasca University. “This has tipped the playing field significantly towards employers, including the government, the largest employer of unionized workers in Alberta.” While the labour movement promised fierce resistance to picketing changes, it launched no legal challenge with any legs. Unions and their members have clearly been reluctant to violate UCP government laws, because of the significant and immediate consequences attached to doing so combined with the delay and uncertain outcome of court challenges.
The UCP’s Restoring Balance in Alberta’s Workplaces Act also interfered with unions’ ability to collect dues. Normally, unions present budgets to their members to vote on each year. Once a budget is passed, every member must pay the union dues required, to fund union activities. The UCP now requires unions to separate out the cost of “core” union functions (e.g., negotiations, handling grievances and educating members) from “political activities and other causes.” Union members are only required to pay the portion of dues devoted to core activities. Unions must get each member to annually opt-in for non-core activities.
According to Kenney, this time-consuming process means “no longer will union workers be forced to fund political campaigns of union bosses!” But the real reason Kenney wanted to interfere in internal union governance, according to United Food and Commercial Workers Local 401 president Tom Hesse, was “to be disruptive, to foment dissent and to encumber unions so they can’t operate.” One knock-on effect of Kenney’s meddling is that unions are reducing their support to charities, community organizations and disaster-relief agencies in order to avoid the hassle of getting members to opt-in. A 2022 Parkland Institute study suggests this will entail a $6-million hit to Alberta communities.
When “bargaining” with major public-sector unions in core government services (e.g., education, healthcare, post-secondary) began in 2020, employers initially proposed wage cuts of 3 per cent to 4 per cent, followed by several years of wage freezes and other sector-specific benefit rollbacks. This pattern clearly demonstrated the government mandates at work behind the scenes. Union leaders began preparing and mobilizing members for strike action, and in October 2020 thousands of AUPE healthcare workers engaged in a one-day wildcat strike to express opposition to the government’s plans to privatize 11,000 healthcare jobs.
As contracts began to be settled in late 2021 and 2022, public-sector workers achieved modest wage increases ranging from 2.75 per cent to 4.25 per cent over four years. While better than initially expected, these settlements continued to fall far behind inflation. And given the demands placed on public-sector workers during the first years of the COVID pandemic, these miserly increases were also deeply insulting.
Post-secondary employers, facing government budget cuts and the government’s secret mandate, were particularly aggressive during bargaining. Faculty at Concordia University of Edmonton, a private university that receives significant public funding, struck in early 2022, and a five-week strike followed at the University of Lethbridge. The Lethbridge strike ended with an agreement that followed the provincial pattern. The employer’s unreasonable behaviour during the strike provided more evidence that the government, not the board of governors, was calling the shots at the bargaining table.
Much of the shift in the government’s demands between 2020 and 2022 can be attributed to the impacts of the pandemic. But even as the crisis revealed the importance and scarcity of healthcare workers, the UCP continued to do less than other provinces to support healthcare workers, including refusing to provide bonus pay to nurses. Alberta’s suddenly improved fiscal situation due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and rising oil prices also took away much of the excuse for imposing drastic austerity.
The UCP’s agenda has been to shift wealth from workers to employers.
The mistreatment of public-sector workers did not end at the bargaining table. The UCP pursued numerous “work-intensification” efforts in healthcare. In the fall of 2020, for example, it announced its plan to lay off 11,000 support staff in cleaning, food, laundry and protective services at AHS. In July 2022 all community lab services were handed to DynaLIFE Medical Labs, which move cost another several hundred public employees their jobs.
Kenney also cut funding to Alberta school boards, resulting in approximately 25,000 education workers and education assistants being laid off in early 2020. These layoffs, amounting to approximately 1 per cent of Alberta’s entire workforce, were announced via Twitter on a weekend, only days after Education Minister Adriana LaGrange had said school boards would see no funding cuts. LaGrange later said this was a temporary layoff in response to COVID school closures, and that funding would be restored once in-person classes resumed. Later she said 2,000 of those jobs would never return.
Teachers also saw the UCP hand the management of their pension fund over to the government-controlled Alberta Investment Management Corporation, despite AIMCo’s history of questionable investment decisions and poor returns. Teachers had to go to court to regain control over their pensions.
The UCP government also made drastic cuts to the post-secondary system, including slashing funding to the University of Alberta by 33 per cent between 2019 and 2022. The U of A responded by firing more than 1,100 people (mostly support staff) and hiking tuition by more than 20 per cent.
The government’s unwillingness to address the airborne transmission of COVID through meaningful public health measures means public-sector workers must now perform their jobs in unsafe workplaces. As of September 2022, Alberta’s WCB had accepted 22,478 time-loss claims for COVID, the vast majority of them from municipal, healthcare and education workers. This figure actually undercounts cases in education, because most Alberta teachers are excluded from the ambit of workers’ compensation.
Working very hard in unnecessarily dangerous workplaces for stagnant wages and declining job security is a recipe for burnout and attrition. The government’s refusal to allow school boards to require classroom masking (which directive led to high rates of illness and absenteeism) and its insistence on imposing a curriculum that is poorly designed (e.g., “find gravity on a globe”), age-inappropriate, plagiarized and often outright racist is demoralizing and exhausting.
In January 2022, 37 per cent of teachers said they soon planned to leave the profession or the province due to stress, exhaustion and anxiety. Long-time Alberta public school teacher and principal Sue Bell told reporters she retired early because of a lack of government support for teachers during the pandemic. “I would have worked for a few years more, but the last year-and-a-half just burnt me out. I was done.”
Burnout and illness among nurses are also routinely creating staff shortages, delays for patients awaiting surgeries and other medical treatments, and the periodic closure of rural emergency services. Not surprisingly, healthcare jobs now often go unfilled and other provinces are aggressively recruiting Alberta nurses. Heather Smith, long-time president of the United Nurses of Alberta, told CBC that her members “are just not prepared to deal with the kind of disrespect they’re feeling here in the province. They want workplaces that respect them and value [their] contributions… And they’re quite prepared to do it in other locations.”
Calgary emergency-room physician J. Edward Les wrote in the Calgary Herald about the long-term impact of the government’s treatment of doctors. “Physicians are running harder and harder to keep up, and in return they’re gifted with constant disrespect from governments and growing abuse from frustrated patients. It’s no mystery why family doctors are leaving in droves, and why we can’t attract enough new ones. The real mystery, perhaps, is why there are any good family physicians left at all.”
Things look no better under Kenney’s successor, Danielle Smith, who has asserted without evidence that staffing shortages have been manufactured by AHS. She has also mused about specifically recruiting unvaccinated healthcare workers. The value of hiring healthcare workers who are skeptical of basic infection-control protocols is hard to fathom.
Illustration by Gerry Rasmussen.
One of the most alarming outcomes of the UCP’s sustained attack on workers is the possibility that the morale and trust of many workers has been irrevocably damaged. This is especially bad in the public sector, as such damage can compromise the functioning of basic public services—doctor availability, ambulance response times, surgery wait times, high-school graduation rates, even worsening math proficiency.
In my experience, public-sector workers are used to recurring bouts of difficult working conditions. For the most part, they just persevere. This reflects that they have deeply held commitments to their students or patients, to their co-workers, to their sense of professional duty and belief in the value of publicly delivered services. It also reflects that they have invested in their careers and communities. Most public-sector workers can see that the cyclical nature of the work means better times will return. Rarely are working conditions so bad that leaving a public-sector job, the profession or the province is worth the cost.
But profoundly bad and worsening conditions with no prospects for improvement can shift this calculus. At some point a further harm or indignity, however small, can cause a worker to throw in the towel. Once a worker makes this decision, it’s very hard to get them to re-engage. This is because fixing the problem isn’t just a matter of the employer walking back that last bad thing it did. Rather, it has to fix the whole range of issues that led to this moment. Few employers or politicians are prepared to repudiate their entire agenda.
When a worker actually quits and moves on (rather than just quietly giving up), they’re unlikely to return. Potential replacements, having heard through the social media grapevine just how rotten things are in Alberta, can be tough to recruit. Only people with no better options would take a public-sector job in Alberta, given how badly the UCP treated their predecessors. This bodes ill for all Albertans, who would receive worse service, often in our most vulnerable moments. And it represents a damning indictment of the UCP government.
Bob Barnetson is a professor of labour relations at Athabasca. His most recent research is a chapter in Anger and Angst: Jason Kenney’s Legacy and Alberta’s Right (Black Rose, 2023).
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