Teachers ordered back to work; classes resume Wednesday
Parents, teachers, public education advocates, members of the Alberta Teachers Association, and NDP MLA Ifran Sabir protested at the McDougall Centre in Calgary on Saturday, December 18, 2021. The protestors called on the government to completely scrap the proposed draft curriculum. ARYN TOOMBS / FOR LIVEWIRE CALGAR Aryn Toombs
By Rob Vogt
The provincial government has ordered teachers back to work, and classes will resume Wednesday. The government passed the Back to School Act on Tuesday, Oct. 28, imposing a four-year agreement covering approximately 51,000 teachers, in effect from Sept. 1, 2024, to Aug. 31, 2028.
The province said the terms match a memorandum of understanding reached Sept. 23 between the Teachers Employer Bargaining Association and the Alberta Teachers Association. Those terms provided a 12 per cent salary increase over four years, additional market adjustments of up to 17 per cent for most teachers, and the hiring of 3,000 teachers and 1,500 educational assistants. Those terms were later rejected by teachers in a province-wide vote.
The Alberta Teachers Association said the strike goes beyond pay. It was about the state of public education in Alberta. That includes addressing increasing class sizes and the more complex needs of students. Teachers need sustainable solutions, and they refused to be back in the same fight for the public education system five or 10 years from now.
The Back to School Act also invokes the Notwithstanding Clause in the Constitution. This will prevent future challenges under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and prevent further job action. Teachers who fail to comply with the back-to-work order will be fined $500 per day. The Alberta Teachers Association or its locals can be fined up to $500,000 per day for job action that contravenes the legislation.
Teachers have been off the job since Oct. 6, when the province-wide strike began. On Oct. 27, the provincial government also announced it was appointing a class size and complexity task force to meet the challenge of increasingly complex classrooms.