The Long-lasting Impact of Strikes in Alberta's History
Alvin Finkel
For three weeks in October 2025, 51,000 Alberta teachers shuttered all public and separate schools in the province.
Huge rallies of teachers, students, parents, and other supporters of the Alberta Teachers’ Association (ATA) marked the strike. Polls found that a large majority of Albertans supported teachers’ demands for higher pay, smaller classrooms, and adequate staffing to support complex students.
In the previous decade, teachers’ pay rose six per cent while inflation increased thirty per cent. Government cost containment efforts resulted in growing class sizes, cuts in educational assistants, and increases in student violence directed at teachers. Teachers wanted their contracts to include partial restoration of wages lost to inflation, maximum classroom sizes, and commitments to dealing with complex students. The government rejected these demands.
On October 29, the government passed the Back to School Act, which ordered teachers to return to the classroom, and imposed its last pre-strike offer. Because a Supreme Court ruling in 2015 declared the right to strike a human right, the government invoked the “notwithstanding clause” that allows governments to override some protections of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
While polls suggest around fifty per cent of Albertans found the use of the notwithstanding clause inappropriate (compared with thirty-three per cent who found it appropriate), many Albertans are left wondering: was the strike worthwhile? Time will tell, but history predicts yes, though perhaps only in the long term.
What is the notwithstanding clause?
The notwithstanding clause was created as part of the 1982 Constitution Act and gives the federal and provincial governments the ability to override certain sections of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms for a period of five years, after which point, the use of the clause must be renewed.
Long Lasting Impacts
Crippling inflation during the First World War, followed by high unemployment and government cutbacks to tame wartime debt, caused strikes for union recognition, better wages, and job security. Government-initiated police repression crushed the Winnipeg General Strike and solidarity strikes, including month-long general strikes in Edmonton and Calgary in 1919. Workers won no immediate gains. But in the aftermath, union activists founded labour parties that promoted both workers’ rights to unionize and social insurance programs.
Memories of that activism, along with revised militancy, caused the federal government to change course during and after the Second World War. They imposed price controls, made collective bargaining contracts legally enforceable documents, and made full employment and social insurance their major post-war priorities. The militancy of 1919 yielded dramatic improvements, however belated.
Legalities at Play
Government employees, especially in women-dominated professions, were latecomers to unionism. But by the 1970s, many were unionized and involved in strikes, both legal and illegal. Before the United Nurses of Alberta (UNA) formed in 1977, nurses earned less than unionized grocery store clerks. After three provincewide strikes in the 1980s, nurses earned wages that reflected their years of training and their responsibilities, as well as concessions regarding vacations, shifts, and work safety. Crucially, the government acceded to nurses’ demands for professional responsibility committees. These are joint management–union bodies where nurses can bring concerns about workload, policies, and equipment that affect the quality of patient care.
But many nurses wondered if the 1988 strike, their third, achieved anything. That strike defied new provincial legislation that banned further healthcare strikes. Fourteen thousand nurses walked picket lines for nineteen days during brutal winter weather to protest wage rollbacks and inadequate staffing. Despite public support for their cause, the government ordered nurses back to work with their demands unaddressed. Their union was handed the largest fine ever imposed upon a Canadian union for holding an illegal strike. Only financial contributions from other unions saved UNA from bankruptcy.
But two years later, when nurses returned to bargaining with the same government, they won everything they had called for in 1988. UNA activists involved in both sets of negotiations concluded that UNA militancy in 1988 had terrified the government, resulting in generosity in 1990 to avoid another bitter strike.
Public Support Matters
Teachers’ labour actions have also sometimes produced employer concessions. In 2002, teachers from twenty-two school districts were ordered back to work after a two-week strike. Arbitration was initially offered by the government but then withdrawn. The ATA responded with a complete withdrawal of teachers’ voluntary services, an approach that spotlighted the unpaid work performed by teachers.
Public opinion favoured the teachers, and the government restored its offer of a fair arbitration process as well as a Learning Commission to investigate teachers’ concerns about classroom conditions. It also assumed costs of the unfunded liability component of teachers’ pensions for one year, the first step toward long-term resolution of that issue. Other government workers accepted reductions in their pensions because the government refused to even discuss unfunded liabilities with them. Teachers’ militancy allowed them to get this issue resolved in their favour.
The 2025 teacher strike may have ended with a resolution that was unsatisfying to many; however, history shows us that the strike’s impact may be far from over.
Alvin Finkel is president of the Alberta Labour History Institute, professor emeritus of history at Athabasca University, and a prolific author whose most recent book is Humans: The 300,000 Year Struggle for Equality.