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“If the NDP want to spend the entire night hanging out with me inside the legislature, I’m happy to do it with them, especially when I’m getting something that matters so much to my constituents through the house.”

Just before MLAs voted to wrap up the 24-hour sitting, Nixon said he still wasn’t convinced by opposition arguments. Bill 2 passed second reading shortly thereafter.

United Conservative MLA Todd Loewen took it upon himself to feed his colleagues as the hours ticked by, setting up a makeshift waffle station inside the legislature building Thursday morning.

By 9 a.m., Opposition Leader Rachel Notley was roasting the government about the impact Bill 2 will have on overtime. Specifically, allowing overtime hours to be banked at straight time, rather than the current time-and-a-half.

She called on the UCP to “go back to the drawing board” and better inform themselves on what she labelled an “aggressive grab at overtime” for 400,000 workers in the province, many of whom are in the oil, gas and construction sectors.

If the UCP is going to pass the bill, she said, it needs to be held accountable “to working people, their families and their employers.”

“When we embark upon these risky ways to the bottom, back to these 1980-style Reaganomics economic plans, it’s divisive, because it’s about growing inequality, not reducing it,” Notley said.

“This is a full-frontal attack on the overtime of working people.”

Raising awareness

Along with changing overtime rules, Bill 2 will cut the minimum hourly wage for students under 18 to $13 and return Alberta to old rules around union certification.