CALGARY—Two-and-a-half weeks after Premier Jason Kenney won Alberta’s election, representatives of the province’s labour movement met in downtown Calgary to figure out what to do — and fast.

The United Conservative government’s labour policy drew criticism from Alberta’s unions, many of whom supported the NDP, long before election night. In their platform, the UCP promised to require unions to obtain “explicit, opt-in approval” from members before using their dues for political activities, reinstate a mandatory secret ballot for union certification, and give workers who bank their overtime hours straight time rather than time-and-a-half pay.

Hundreds of delegates from Alberta’s unions filled Calgary’s Telus Convention Centre as part of the Alberta Federation of Labour’s annual convention over the weekend to — among other things — organize a response to the UCP’s proposals. NDP Rachel Notley spoke at the convention on Saturday, vowing to protect Alberta’s $15 minimum wage and overtime pay. No specific actions or demonstrations have been finalized, but AFL president Gil McGowan said they can’t wait.

“That’s why we decided today that we’re going to start educating and mobilizing and protesting now to stop what’s coming, as opposed to just reacting after the fact,” he said outside the conference.

But delegates also heard from a labour representative in Ontario about Premier Doug Ford’s policies in the eastern province, ones which McGowan described as a “cautionary tale” for Alberta.

Eleven months ago, Ontario voters ousted Liberal premier Kathleen Wynne for Progressive Conservative leader Doug Ford. The elder brother of late Toronto mayor Rob Ford wasted no time in establishing an “open for business” agenda, one that Ontario unions have described as disastrous.

Since taking power, Ford’s government has suspended a planned move to a $15 per hour minimum wage, removed provisions granting two sick days to Ontario workers, and allowed post-secondary students to opt out of ancillary fees. According to a ministry of education memo previously obtained by the Star, 1,558 full-time teaching jobs will be gone by this fall, rising to 3,475 by 2022-2023.

In a presentation to delegates on Sunday, Thevaki Thevaratnam, the Ontario Federation of Labour’s director of research and education, said the Ford government’s plans aren’t unique.

“Unfortunately, these are not scenarios that are specific to Ontario,” she said on Sunday. “We could see them playing out across Canada, including Alberta.”

Ontario’s labour movement has organized mass rallies on the steps of the provincial legislature, picketed outside the offices of members of parliament, and denounced the Ford government’s cuts. Students from 700 elementary and secondary schools staged a walkout in April to protest the Ontario government’s education policies.

The Alberta labour movement’s response to the UCP isn’t clear yet, but McGowan said it won’t involve demonstrations alone.

“We have to educate, and we have to win hearts and minds,” McGowan said. “If we’re not successful in doing that, then it will be easy for Jason Kenney to proceed with his agenda.”

Alberta has the lowest rate of unionization in the country — just 23 per cent of workers, according to Statistics Canada data from 2016. Yet unionized workers and their supporters have organized mass demonstrations in the past. In October 1997, around 20,000 people rallied on the Alberta Legislature’s grounds to oppose former premier Ralph Klein’s cuts to education funding.

But these are different times. McGowan described Kenney’s political brand as more akin to American-style Republicanism than the more traditionally Canadian conservatism espoused by Klein. He worried the premier would undermine the rights of Alberta’s workers and unions.

“Ralph Klein was interested in balancing the budget and he was willing to do that by making very deep — and what I would describe as irresponsible and unnecessary — cuts,” McGowan said. “But he wasn’t trying to transform the fabric of Canadian society.”

The UCP’s supermajority win in April’s provincial election leaves a lot of uncertainty for Alberta’s labour movement. With the NDP reduced to just 24 seats, the party will be hard-pressed to oppose the UCP’s plans for labour and workplace reform in the province. During her speech at the AFL convention, Notley called for supporters to regroup and defend the NDP’s labour reforms.

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“Obviously there was a lot of disappointment among our delegates about how the election turned out,” McGowan said. “But we found strength in each other.”

With files from Andrew Jeffrey

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