UNA absolutely supports ATA and Alberta teachers: Heather Smith

“We absolutely support the teachers and respect the decisions they have and will make.”

United Nurses of Alberta supports the Alberta Teachers Association and its members in their response to the abhorrent decision by Alberta’s United Conservative Party Government to use the Notwithstanding Clause of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to abrogate their constitutionally guaranteed right to free collective bargaining. 
 
“We absolutely support the teachers and respect the decisions they have and will make,” UNA President Heather Smith told UNA’s Annual General Meeting in Edmonton this morning. 
 
UNA’s leadership will meet and discuss responses appropriate to support and defend the teachers and all working people in Alberta in the face of this unprecedented violation of human rights by Premier Danielle Smith and the UCP government.
 
At 2 a.m. Tuesday as Albertans slept, the UCP government rammed through a bill ending the province-wide strike by 51,000 public, Catholic and francophone teachers and offensively imposing a four-year collective agreement on the ATA that had been rejected by nearly 90 per cent of its members who were on strike.
 
The use of the Charter’s section 33, commonly known as the Notwithstanding Clause, is an acknowledgement by the government that it is intentionally violating the fundamental right to free association set out in section 2 of the Charter. 
 
The government had other options to end the strike that would not have violated Charter-protected rights, but chose the “nuclear option,” Smith said. 
 
She said UNA is particularly concerned because the legislation goes further than that typically used in similar situations elsewhere in Canada and because it is the first time the Notwithstanding Clause has been used in Alberta. “This is an incredibly troubling precedent.”
 
Like UNA members in their recent negotiations for a new collective agreement, Alberta’s teachers were fighting for better working conditions, including class size limits that also protect students and the quality of public education. 
 
UNA and its more than 35,000 members stand in solidarity with Alberta’s teachers and with working Albertans and we will unequivocally oppose politically motivated attacks on workers’ fundamental rights as we have seen from the UCP this week, Smith said.