With Deputy Premier Thomas Lukaszuk at the helm, the stalemate in Alberta’s provincial jails continued through the night with wildcatting Correctional Peace Officers still manning picket lines and the government making dubious claims guards were returning to work.
The dispute started months ago over occupational health and safety concerns about Edmonton’s just completed $580-million Remand Centre, turned into a strike Friday when two CPOs were disciplined for complaining about them, and quickly spread to the province’s other seven provincial Correctional facilities.
Yesterday, Alberta Sheriffs, who handle some courthouse security and are members of the same local of the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees as the striking guards, voted to join the job action — even though the strike had been declared illegal on Saturday by the reliably employer-friendly Alberta Labour Relations Board.
Probation Officers, also members of AUPE Local 003, voted to join the strike as well.
The government of Premier Alison Redford, meanwhile, seems to have been caught completely off guard and doesn’t have a clue in a carload how to respond beyond bluster and bullying, which so far have not improved the situation much.
So if things were interesting on a quiet Sunday, which coincidentally happened to be the International Day of Mourning for workers killed and injured on the job, they have the potential to get a whole lot more exciting when the judges of Alberta make their way into their courtrooms this morning.
All rise!
One thing we know about Canadian judges is that they’re unlikely to be pleased if they don’t get their way about court proceedings. So what happens if prisoners on remand they have ordered to appear today don’t turn up because of the chaos in provincial jails, and now in courthouses too?
Nor is it clear what impact this will have on contract negotiations now under way for all 20,000 direct government employees who are members of AUPE — of whom the 2,500 CPOs make up an influential component.
Meanwhile, claims and counterclaims were being furiously traded yesterday about whether the CPOs were giving up and obeying the government’s demand that they return to work.
Alberta Justice issued a statement implying the strike had been all but broken. AUPE denied it. Both sides accused the other of lying. The media didn’t seem to know whom to believe and just reported the competing claims straight up.
Now, a moment of full disclosure here. I worked for 12 years for AUPE, but I haven’t worked there since 2011. I have never met tougher trade unionists than Local 003’s members, for whom solidarity is more than a slogan.
So I am skeptical that very many have crossed picket lines and gone back to work, even when they received intimidating court papers ordering individual guards to go back to work or face the consequences.
Moreover, I have been told the few who wavered have mostly been coaxed back to the picket line by their colleagues — whom Lukaszuk, tit for tat, also accuses of intimidation.
All that said, it must be acknowledged that AUPE Local 003 marches, shall we say, to the beat of its own drum, another reality the government seems to have missed completely. Moreover, it’s not clear to the public or anyone else if the striking guards really have a plan, and if they do, what it is.
Tough and angry wildcat strikers without clear goals versus a one-trick pony of an austerity government that defaults to bullying is not a formula for negotiating a settlement that will stick.
Instead, we have more RCMP officers heading from Saskatchewan to man the province’s jails — a plan that’s certain to cost us an already scarce Bitumen Buck or two!
Meanwhile, Lukaszuk insists that everything’s just dandy inside the jails, which Mounties untrained as correctional officers and exhausted managers have on permanent lockdown.
No one has yet asked the inmates what they think about this, but count on it pressure is building there too.
No one can be very happy about this situation except opposition politicians.
This post also appears on David Climenhaga’s blog, Alberta Diary.
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