On January 15, the Concordia University of Edmonton Faculty Association (CUEFA) ratified the tentative agreement reached with the university administration, ending a landmark strike in Alberta’s union history. The agreement opens the door for classes to start on Wednesday, January 19, 2022. Of the membership, 89 per cent (73 of 82 members) voted in favour of ratification. “This new agreement is a win for faculty, students and the community because it will enable the University to recruit and retain excellent faculty and lays the foundation for a stronger learning environment,” said CUEFA President, Glynis Price. “Collective action is what made it possible, and CUEFA is grateful to the students, parents, other associations and allies across Canada who rallied in support of this strike.”

Striking Concordia University (Edmonton) faculty and their many allies carried out daily pickets of the university despite the almost minus 40 temperatures. In addition to the members of CUEFA who called the strike, members of CUPE 3911, Alberta Union of Provincial Employees (AUPE), Athabasca University Faculty Association (AUFA), the Association of the Academic Staff of the University of Alberta (AASUA), Non-Academic Staff Association, Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT), Alberta Federation of Labour, CUPW, Teamsters, ironworkers, teachers, nurses, and many others walked the picket line and sent messages of solidarity and support.

CUEFA’s is the first faculty strike in Alberta’s history, and the first strike in the post-secondary sector in the last 2.5 years. The strike began January 4, 2022, after many months of unsuccessful bargaining with the recalcitrant employer. CUEFA President Glynis Price stated in a January 8 interview: “One of the biggest issues for our members was in fact workload. Our faculty members have one of the highest workloads in the country, teaching four courses a term. We were able to negotiate a decrease in teaching load with increased research expectations.”

Price referred to other important issues in the strike including job security, intellectual property rights, and faculty salaries – the lowest in Canada before the strike. While some gains were made on these fronts, activists stress the need to continue the fight on these matters and also to organize and protect the sessionals.

The status of the over 100 sessionals, instructors who teach on contract and who are not members of any labour organization, was of grave concern. As they are not CUEFA members, they received no strike pay even though they were locked out by the university to try to use them as a wedge against the full-time faculty. Further complicating the situation was that Concordia is a “private” university, which means there is no requirement for employees to be organized. Attempts to organize have been undermined by the administration’s underhanded tactics. Besides being precarious employees with no job security, sessionals are paid much less than those at other universities. They receive approximately $5,900 per course, while sessionals at University of Alberta with equivalent qualifications, for example, are paid over $9,000 per course.

The CUEFA strike was the first strike by post-secondary faculty under Alberta’s Bill 4, introduced in March 2016, which finally “gave” Alberta’s post-secondary faculty the legal right to strike. Prior to that, faculty fell under either the Post-Secondary Learning Act (PSLA) or the Public Services Employee Relations Act (PSERA) both of which made strikes illegal. But on April 2, 2015, Alberta Judge Denis Thomas ruled that the no-strike clauses violated the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and gave the provincial government until April 1, 2016 to rewrite the offending sections so that strikes were legal. His ruling followed a January 30, 2015 ruling by the Supreme Court of Canada in Saskatchewan which struck down a provincial anti-labour law that prevented public sector workers from striking on the grounds that the law was unconstitutional. In fact, public sector workers in Alberta have not had the legal right to strike since Tory premier Peter Lougheed eliminated it by legislating PSERA, 38 years ago.

As expected, one of the feeble arguments put forward by the employer to keep faculty salaries low was that “there is no money.” However, the facts directly contradicted this claim. Enrolment has increased about 50 per cent in the last five years alone. Tuition has also gone up for students. So, the university has been in the black for a number of years, including a surplus of $11.5 million in the last year during the pandemic. To add insult to injury, just as collective bargaining began the university spent $1.75 million to buy a nearby mansion. The mansion is a heritage property and requires upkeep and tax payments. The area is zoned residential so that would disallow large parties and conferences, not to mention that the rooms are tiny. No credible reason for the mansion’s purchase has been provided.

In the broader context of post-secondary education in Alberta, the Concordia strike took place when a number of other provincial faculty associations are going into bargaining or are in mediation and potentially getting into a strike position. As Price pointed out in her interview: “There has been a slow and steady attempt to dismantle our post-secondary system in this province. All higher education is under attack.” Here Price is referring to the current United Conservative Party government’s vicious cuts to post-secondary education which has in turn led to dismantling of the system by firing staff, privatizing services, cutting programs, eliminating courses, and even closing libraries.

With their strike, the Concordia Faculty defended their rights and those of their students, pointing out that their working conditions are students’ learning conditions. They also stood up for the right to education and fought for the public education system upon which the whole society depends.

(Workers’ Forum, posted January 22, 2022. Photos: CUEFA)