While many parents are happy about their children returning to school after a three-week strike in October, others remain concerned about how it ended.
Ezinne Nnabugwu , a mother of two young children, says a strike should not have ended with back-to-work legislation.
“Being forced back to work doesn’t resolve issues,” she said. “Maybe in another, I don’t know, six months, one year, you know – there’ll be another strike.”
Even though Nnabugwu can do some work at home, with two young kids, she also has to hire someone to help with particular tasks or when she has to go into the office.
Along with childcare, parents also had to keep up with their kids’ learning.
While she used workbooks and educational apps, Nnabugwu said that even this solution was not without fault.
“Because they’re also so young, I kind of have to sit with them when they do those things,” she said.
On Oct. 28, Bill 2, the back-to-work bill, passed the Alberta Legislature, forcing teachers to return to work.
Education Minister Demetrios Nicolaides justified the law, saying his government faced an “undeniable moral imperative” to stop a strike that was harming students’ social and educational development.
The return-to-work legislation imposes a four-year contract that includes several of the terms teachers initially rejected at the beginning of October. It also came with a $500-a-day fine for any teacher who refused to return to work.
Some parents have turned their frustration into action.
On Nov. 4, the staff and faculty associations of MRU held a rally on campus to oppose the governing UCP’s use of the notwithstanding clause of the Charter to avoid a court challenge to forcing teachers back to work.
Jazz Drakes, a future teacher studying at MRU, said she feels scared about the future, noting she’s seen issues in Alberta classrooms during her practicums.
“It’s looking pretty bleak, so far to be honest,” she said.
Many also mentioned that they were worried about the precedent being set, worried if the UCP can do this to the teachers, if they can invoke the charter to violate their rights, who’s to say they won’t do it to other people?
Brenda Lang, the president of the Faculty Association, organized the rally, saying the UCP’s decision was “an egregious action that was taken against unionized workers.”
In the wake of the strike, the UCP announced a cabinet committee to address class size and complexity.