Some Alberta school divisions and one labour expert anticipate that a bill coming Monday ordering teachers back to work will say when classes should resume.
Mount Royal University human resources professor Christian Cook said in a Friday interview that once proclaimed, back-to-work legislation could order teachers back into schools within 24 to 48 hours.
“Once that happens, strike action will actually be deemed illegal,” Cook said.
The Alberta government has said Finance Minister Nate Horner intends to table the Back to School Act on Monday, aiming to end the lockout of 51,000 public, Catholic and francophone teachers who went on strike Oct. 6.
The province’s four largest school divisions said they don’t know when classes will resume, but are telling families not to send their children to school on Monday — the legislature hasn’t yet debated or passed the order.
Edmonton Catholic Schools expects the legislation will spell out when teachers are to return to work, spokesperson Christine Meadows said.
The government house leader’s office did not respond to questions on Friday about what time on Monday the minister intends to table Bill 2, or when he will call for debate in the legislature.
The order paper, which lists motions that government members and MLAs intend to make, lists five motions that, if passed, would allow the legislature to limit the time allotted for debate and to push the bill through multiple stages of debate within one day.
The Opposition NDP said it will oppose the legislation, but the United Conservative Party government has a majority of votes.
Cook said if the government successfully uses fast-tracking tools, the bill could pass on Monday or Tuesday.
She said employers also have the ability to fine or penalize any teachers, or their association, if they refuse to return to work when the law takes effect.
“Teachers will not have the opportunity to resist that,” Cook said. “… The consequences are actually very high for non-compliance.”
Similarly, back-to-work legislation would end the employers’ lockout, which began on Oct. 9. Alberta Teachers’ Association (ATA) president Jason Schilling said at a news conference on Friday a bill that outlaws job action would also prevent teachers from working to rule.
Schilling said ordering teachers back to work does not resolve the underlying disagreements that led to the strike.
Teachers say they want a pay increase that considers rising inflation, and steps to address untenable working and learning conditions. They say increasing numbers of students with complex needs don’t have the assistance they need, while class sizes continue to climb.
“We are in a situation that cannot be ignored any longer, and we are running the risk of returning to the same broken system that drove us to strike in the first place,” Schilling said.
Will student-teacher ratios be addressed?
Schilling said he didn’t know whether the ATA will challenge a new law in court, what would happen if members refuse to return to schools, or how teachers would respond to any limits the government places on reaching a resolution. He said the ATA’s governing body has to see the legislation first.
The ATA wants a legal mechanism to require schools to provide enough staff to educate and assist the growing number of students enrolling in schools. Its last proposal to employers included student-teacher ratios, phased in over four years, where students with higher needs were weighted more heavily.
Schilling said Alberta is one of two Canadian provinces without such a legal mechanism to control class sizes and complexity.
“We know our members need to see that,” he said.
Premier Danielle Smith has said the ATA’s demands are inflexible, and that she thinks there are other ways to address classroom complexities by hiring more educational assistants.
Cook said the government can prescribe the next steps for trying to reach an agreement with teachers, and it could send them to negotiation, mediation or binding arbitration. She said if they use arbitration, there’s a greater chance the government could restrict which issues can be discussed.
The government has previously tried to exclude pupil-teacher ratios from proposed talks.
Critics have panned the government’s intention to use back-to-work legislation, saying it infringes on workers’ Charter rights to collectively bargain.
But if the ATA tries to challenge the law in court, teachers will still have to report to work while any case makes its way through court, Cook said.
All public sector labour unions in the province are closely watching the response and how their bargaining rights could be affected, she added.
“Some are signalling concerns about democracy overall. So, this is significantly larger than just the teachers.”
What’s involved in reopening schools
In emailed statements, school boards in Edmonton and Calgary said they’ll be ready to welcome students back when the teachers return to work.
Edmonton’s public and Catholic divisions said they haven’t yet received information from the government about how schools are expected to make up lost instructional time, and whether they’ll be expected to add hours or days to the school calendar.
Meadows said the Edmonton Catholic School Division is looking at several scenarios to help high school students finish semester classes by the end of January.
“There are many factors impacting our planning right now, including whether the January diploma examinations are proceeding, and if they are proceeding, whether the administration dates are going to be pushed back,” she said.
Schilling said some school divisions have discussed having teachers come back to work for a day without students at first to get organized.
“We have to ensure that educational assistants, bus drivers [and] everybody else who’s working within the system is ready to go,” he said.
Some parents who say they miss having their kids in school are disheartened at the way classes might resume.
“There’s a portion of me that is relieved, but then there’s another portion knowing that none of the issues have been addressed,” Calgary parent Rubina Sayed said on Friday. “They’re going back into the same complex, ballooning class sizes that they were before, and knowing that teachers cannot keep up with the demands of the classroom right now.”
Calgary parent Ahmed Jedda, who has two kids in school, says his children have been crammed into class groupings of 45 students with two teachers assigned.
When they return to school, he said, teachers will come back to the same conditions feeling even worse.
“I’m not happy,” he said about back-to-work legislation. “I’m not happy with the whole education system in Alberta.”
