October 6 - So it Begins - The Alberta Teacher Strike

[malcolmk14]

Originally Posted by Slava

There never used to be a fall break, so did teachers take a pay cut when that was implemented?

No. They start earlier in August. Teachers still teach the same number of days/hours. It was a rearrangement of the calendar, not a reduction.

[Ashartus]

Originally Posted by Slava

There never used to be a fall break, so did teachers take a pay cut when that was implemented?

Not all boards have a fall break (Calgary Catholic doesn't). They have a set number of school days and each board decides on the calendar. To have a fall break they are either starting earlier (e.g. there have been a few years where public started before Labour Day and Catholic started after) or running later.

[Major Major]

Originally Posted by Eric Vail

There are more costs than teacher salaries to open schools. Support staff, caretakers, bussing and other costs are incurred. The UCP are not providing additional funds to public schools! They have made that crystal clear. Boards don't have enough money to pay for all these things.

On top of that, if you took days like fall break where teachers were not working, and now asked them to work, you would need to pay them. Teachers would need to be paid for online course work in the summer or if you extended the school year into July.

Exactly my point. The entire system could have been made whole if they felt like it. Likely wouldn't have been as politically damaging for them either. Just more work and less savings for them so they just pretended this was some emergency.

[bizaro86]

Originally Posted by Eric Vail

There are more costs than teacher salaries to open schools. Support staff, caretakers, bussing and other costs are incurred. The UCP are not providing additional funds to public schools! They have made that crystal clear. Boards don't have enough money to pay for all these things.

On top of that, if you took days like fall break where teachers were not working, and now asked them to work, you would need to pay them. Teachers would need to be paid for online course work in the summer or if you extended the school year into July.

Did the province reduce funding during the strike? If not the board should have extra money since they didn't pay the teachers during the strike.

[Point Blank]

Originally Posted by bizaro86

Did the province reduce funding during the strike? If not the board should have extra money since they didn't pay the teachers during the strike.

The government gave the money to parents with the $30 per day payments.

[Eric Vail]

Originally Posted by bizaro86

Did the province reduce funding during the strike? If not the board should have extra money since they didn't pay the teachers during the strike.

The government doesn't give the money for teacher salaries during a strike to school boards.

[malcolmk14]

Originally Posted by Major Major

Exactly my point. The entire system could have been made whole if they felt like it. Likely wouldn't have been as politically damaging for them either. Just more work and less savings for them so they just pretended this was some emergency.

It’s just because the larger goal is to get rid of the ATA.

[iggy_oi]

Originally Posted by powderjunkie

My unrealistic expecatations were driven by the 'unprecedented response' that was promised. I'm totally fine with a slow process, I just think they did a crappy job of selling it (or explaining what it will cost them, or explaining any of the other good points you have been making).

I can kinda see where you’re coming from with you having not really understood what the precedence was. That being said I’m sure you realize that’s not really on them.

The only action I wanted to see was threatening a big general strike. No timelines or details necessary. "we are continuing to iron out those details with our members, and it does not serve us to disclose anything further at this time.

I get that but promising something that they can’t guarantee delivery of isn’t likely to do them any favours in the long run.

Let our imaginations run wild, let business's imaginations run wild, and let the UCPs imaginations run wild. Uncertainty was the most powerful tool in the box, and IMO Gil squandered it. Maybe there are thousands out there who didn't hear those remarks? But I'm pretty sure the UCP did...(and I don't mean to lay the blame on Gil...I presume that press conference was the culmination of a group effort)

You can always walk back expectations later if necessary. But not necessarily.

Isn’t that essentially what you’re saying was your perception of what they actually did though?

As for the Ontario comparison, you're right. But I'd venture that Alberta has a different challenge in the sense that a higher proportion of union members here likely vote blue. That's tricky to navigate, but they could also be an opportunity.

There’s lots of union members who vote conservative in Ontario as well, the difference is that over there more of those voters won’t only vote for conservative. That’s an important factor.

I can appreciate that you probably didn’t like how blunt I was with my initial responses but the reason I was is because even though it’s great that more and more people are wanting change a lot of Albertans need a bit of a reality check on the situation. Simply put, it’s impossible to get to where you want to go if you don’t know where you are starting at.

For any kind of political action to be successful you need the support of the public. More people are already getting more involved which is great, but we need more if we expect to win against a government like this one that is backed by big business and have a lot of more resources at their disposal to send a counter message. The faster more people on the sidelines get in the game the faster you’ll see results.

Getting off the sidelines can be as simple as having the difficult discussions/debates with friends and families about why someone like yourself who was previously apathetic when it came to unions is now realizing they actually do need your support because they can provide a valuable benefit to people even if they aren’t a union member themselves.

You’re probably thinking to yourself “why can’t the unions just convince people themselves?” and the answer to that is they can and do but as I said before there’s a lot of money and paid-for government power to counter their messaging. Aside from that it also carries a lot more weight when someone hears that message from someone outside of unions who has already changed their stance, as opposed to hearing it from a person who will be considered to have a bias.

There’s a lot more labour issues happening in this province aside from what gets a lot of news coverage which is generally limited to anything the government is involved in. So it’s not hard to find examples of where you can show support and encourage others to do the same.