Strikes are usually more about respect than wages
By Lethbridge Herald on October 31, 2025.
Editor,
There’s an old saying in the Labour movement: “An employer gets the union it deserves…” and I suspect the UCP government is about to discover this for themselves.
Now, keep in mind people do not go on strike just because they got out of bed on the wrong side that morning. They strike because their pay is not keeping up with the cost of living, because their working conditions are intolerably onerous, and, and this is important, they strike because they feel disrespected. spent 40 years in the corrosively confrontational labour management environment that is the Canadian Post Office so I’m a bit jaundiced, but I also spent those years, and more, watching other unions, other workers, and I’ve come to believe that it is that last bit, the lack.of respect, which determines the fundamental culture of a workplace.
You can negotiate pay and benefits. You can argue over working conditions but all of that presupposes a fundamental parity between the parties, between employer and employees. Understand, I’m not claiming an equality between boss and worker. That’s obviously not the case in any employment relationship. Even the most skilled, most in demand employee is at the mercy of the man behind the desk. Which is why labour unions exist.
Standing together, that power imbalance is somewhat offset. And one of the things that happens on a more level playing field is the parties have to treat each other with respect. And that is something that is horrendously difficult for many employers to accept. Certainly it has proved impossible for the current provincial government in their relations with the teachers.
Any government has a selection of big sticks at their disposal when it comes to dealing with their employees, a selection only partially mitigated by the uneasy awareness that said employees are also voters and the friends and neighbours of other voters and as such demanding of a modicum of caution.
Because, and this is the last time I’ll repeat this: An employer gets the union it deserves, and it the employer doesn’t treat their employees, if a politician doesn’t treat their voters, with some respect, said workers, said voters, are going to repay that lack of respect with interest.
It’s a lesson I suspect the premier and her cohort are going to learn over the coming months and years.
Ken Sears
Lethbridge
11-10
“The Government is going to learn over the coming months and years”? How do you prophesy this Mr. Sears? Perhaps it is the other way around “The Union(s) are going to learn over the coming months and years”!
Unrealistic Union demands can not be sustained, how much is enough Mr. Union? “Oh just a little bit more” those days are gone. Teacher’s Ynion refused to enter into “enhanced mediation” to reach a contract settlement, why? Because Mediation uses real factors in determining concessions, including CPI , Cost of Living and comparative labour market trends, in other words the Union in Neduation would most likely have had a reduced mediated settlement than what the Government had offered! 12% over 3 years is an incredible raise in today’s market, 3,000 new teachers and 1,500 new teacher assistants schools and other concessions… not bad in my eyes! Question, how much money did the ATA give to the NDP as a donation last election? And how much did the ATA provide to striking teachers? Amazingly you will find that the ATA supported the NDP very richly in the election while not a cent was given to striking teachers!
Now let’s move to your realm of expertise, the CUPW (postal strike). So the Union General strike failed and now rotating strikes????? The Union is now apparently relying in “public sympathy” to realize an end to an impasse in their negotiations, good luck with that! (However, CUPW does provide strike pay for their members).
Let’s give credit where credit is due, thank you to the government for doing what had to be done by introducing back to work to legislation and freeing the student hostages the ATA were holding as ransom!
“…freeing the student hostages…” ?! says the man being held in bondage by emotion, feelings, misinformation, disinformation, rhetoric and propaganda.
i see all the dying students you babbled on about, killed by striking teachers. at least there are still hostages left, which means some of the students are still alive. mind you, they may as well be dead, because they may never learn to factor binomials, and if they never master that they will never be able to factor polynomials.
over the past 15 years teachers have had increases in salary of mostly zero and 1%, and nothing that has been anywhere close to inflation. moreover, they have been forced to give more of their time without compensation, ever increasing class sizes, and more emotional/behavioural and learning issues to contend with – while con named govts look the other way.
Reality, you profess to be a Christian, so why do you persist in posting comments that are, shall we say, untethered to the truth? The ATA refused to participate in enhanced negotiation primarily because the province refused to include class size and classroom complexity in the terms of reference. Why do you continue to lie about the basis for the ATA’s position?
Let’s not forget that class size was a major issue in the last strike. And before the province stopped collecting data on class sizes it manipulated the number by including teachers without classrooms in the calculation.
well shared – thank you for solid perspective.
the imbalance between haves and have nots has been widening significantly since the greedy 80s, but ever more the past 20 years. too big to fail has rewarded the biggest and sleaziest crooks of the modern era with oodles of public money, no less.