I was invited by the Alberta Colleges and Institutes Faculty Associations to speak at their 2026 conference in Jasper this week. They asked me to speak on labour rights, worker advocacy, and the current landscape for Alberta’s post-secondary worker.
Here are my remarks.
Hey, fellow workers. My name is Kim Siever. My pronouns are he/they, and I’m a labour journalist with The Alberta Worker, an independent startup media outlet based out of Lethbridge and focused on publishing content related to the working class, particularly in Alberta but also in Canada. Today, I want to talk to you about labour rights, worker advocacy, and the current landscape for Alberta’s post-secondary workers.
Just before I get into my remarks, I wanted to note that I have asthma, which makes it difficult to speak for long periods, so if you hear me coughing or clearing my throat, that’s why. I’m not contagious. I also have arthritis, which makes it difficult to stand for longer periods, which is why I am sitting down.
I thought I’d start out by talking a little bit about The Alberta Worker and how it got to where it is today, as I think this journey is directly related to this presentation topic.
What became The Alberta Worker got its start over 6 years ago, in March 2020. We were just days into the COVID-19 pandemic, and many of the public spaces had been ordered shut down by the provincial government. At the time, I was a freelancer working in social media management and copy editing. Most of my clients had physical spaces, which means they lost customers. With their own loss in revenue, every one of them eventually cancelled their contracts with me. For the first time in 7 years, I had no work.
I was applying for jobs and trying to find new clients somehow, but in the meantime, I seemed to have had a little time on my hands. One day during this period, I noticed a Twitter conversation about a land deal regarding Crown land in Southern Alberta, and it piqued my interest. I spent a few hours doing some digging and discovered that the land was sold to a family that had collectively donated over $100,000 to the governing United Conservative Party. I compiled what I found into a story and published it on a blog I had at the time. It went viral. In fact, it crashed my website, so I was forced to spend several hundred dollars on a new domain and third-party hosting. About a week later, I wrote another article that was also pretty popular in which I dispelled some myths the UCP kept using to discredit Alberta doctors.
Prior to this, I was writing a few articles from time to time on harm reduction related to the drug crisis. People had signed up as Patreon supporters over the previous few months because they appreciated the work I had been doing in that area, and I was making about $75 a month as a result. Well, this newfound traffic boosted my Patreon subscribers to the point that I realized if I stopped looking for a job and stopped looking for clients and instead redirected all my time and energy into this, I could get enough subscribers to do it full-time. So that’s what I did. And The Alberta Worker was born. Well, not quite.
When I switched to doing journalism full-time, I actually branded it as Kim Siever News, and I focused on covering politics. The UCP had been in power for about a year, and there seemed to be a lot to write about, with debunking claims they made, providing context to cherry-picked media releases, or even writing the occasional investigative piece to expose what seemed to be shady practices.
However, after a couple of years in, I noticed that I started to do more labour-focused articles. For example, I would report on the monthly national labour force survey results published by Statistics Canada. It was the most comprehensive coverage offered by any media outlet, especially regarding Alberta’s labour market. Some public sector collective bargaining agreements had expired, so I was covering the bargaining process on a few of them. Lethbridge Starbucks workers were trying to organize, and I provided the most comprehensive coverage of those collectivization efforts.
It seemed to me that I was moving away from primarily writing about politics to now specializing in labour news. As a result, I rebranded again in the spring of 2022 to emphasize this emerging focus. And that’s how The Alberta Worker was born. That summer, I also launched the Alberta Worker Podcast, where I interview members of the working class about their life stories and their personal labour journeys. Ask me about it later if you would like to be a guest on the podcast.
Now, let’s get to the reason I am here today: labour rights, worker advocacy, and the current landscape for Alberta’s post-secondary workers.
I graduated from what is now Lethbridge Polytechnic in 2001. I completed their multimedia production programme, and my practicum ended up turning into a full-time job, where I worked for 9 years before being laid off during budget cuts thanks to frozen operating grants from the provincial government at the time. It was the only unionized job I have ever had, which was a huge material blessing to our young, growing family. As well, my first paid speaking gig was at Olds College. After my spouse got her master’s degree, one of the first places to hire her to teach was what was then Red Deer College. Needless to say, I have a special place in my heart for the colleges and institutes in Alberta.
I want to start with the broader labour environment in Alberta then move onto issues specific to ACIFA members.
Since the UCP took power in 2019 under Jason Kenney, they’ve introduced several pieces of legislation that have made things more challenging for workers. The first change was actually introduced in their second bill, the so-called Open For Business Act, which took effect in the summer of 2019.
This bill lowered the minimum wage for student workers under 18 from $15 an hour to $13 an hour. This meant teenagers doing the exact same job as adults were paid less for the same work. On top of that, they haven’t changed the adult minimum wage the entire time they’ve been in office, and now it’s the lowest minimum wage in the country, for the first time in over a decade. This is the second longest period since 1965 that Alberta minimum wage workers haven’t seen a wage increase.
The bill also changed overtime pay rules. Prior to this bill becoming law, workers could bank their overtime hours at 1.5 times their worked hours. So, if someone worked 3 hours, they could bank those 3 hours, and then when they wanted to take it as time off, they could take 4.5 hours off instead of 3 hours. This was in line with paid overtime in Alberta, which was at 1.5 times. After Bill 2 was passed, employers could give the banked time as straight time, which encouraged them to pay out overtime, rather than allow workers to take the extra time off.
Finally, Bill 2 reduced statutory holiday pay, particularly for part-time and casual workers. Prior to the bill, workers received holiday pay regardless of whether they worked the holiday and regardless of whether the stat holiday fell on a scheduled workday. After the bill was passed, workers could only receive holiday pay if the stat holiday fell on a day they normally worked, which, of course, penalizes those who don’t have a set schedule.
The following year, the UCP government introduced Bill 32, otherwise known as the Restoring Balance in Alberta’s Workplaces Act. This new legislation required unions to now get explicit consent from their members before they could use revenue collected from dues for social or political causes. This increased the administrative burdens on unions, which meant additional costs, and it restricted their ability to use funds for advocacy for the broader working class.
In that same bill, the UCP introduced changes to make it harder to unionize. First, they more than doubled the certification process timeline. Before, workers could hold a certification vote just 10 calendar days after they applied to the Alberta Labour Relations Board for certification. Now, they have to wait 20 business days, basically an entire month. This gives employers more time to unionbust.
As well, prior to the bill, employers had limited opportunity to dispute a certification application, usually just whether a worker was eligible to participate in the certification vote. Now, they can challenge procedural or technical issues on the certification process itself, such as minor errors in the application, supporting documents that were filed incorrectly, timing of the application, scope of which job titles are included in the proposed bargaining unit, and whether the union used so-called coercion to gain support among the workers.
Later that year, the UCP government also introduced Bill 77, the Ensuring Safety and Cutting Red Tape Act. Keep in mind that red tape is simply a business-friendly euphemism for deregulation, which is nothing more than the removal of regulations. Most regulations fall into 3 camps: protect workers, protect the public, and protect the environment. Removing these regulations means increasing risk for workers, increasing risk for the public, and increasing risk for the environment. That should give you an idea of the motive behind this legislation.
Specific to workers, it undermined workplace safety. Prior to the bill, joint health and safety committees were mandatory in workplaces with 20 or more workers and worksite health and safety representatives were required at worksites with between 5 and 19 workers. Under the new bill, the requirements shifted to being risk-based, being mandatory only in workplaces with higher risk of accident, injuries, or exposure to hazardous conditions. This resulted in fewer workplaces having workplace health and safety committees.
Also in Bill 47 was a change to training for health and safety committee members. Prior to the bill, all members of the committee had to have adequate training, no matter how big the employer was or what industry it was in. Now, some workplaces can provide less training, which can lead to less experienced representatives in charge of safety practices in the workplace.
That same bill also changed the worker’s right to refuse unsafe work. The bill moved away from workers having a presumptive right to refuse work that seems dangerous, which employers had to then fix and were unable to discipline the workers for refusing that work. Now, the work must present undue or immediate danger, which makes it harder for workers to justify refusals and even discourages them from refusing unsafe work in the first place.
Now that we’ve reviewed how the UCP government has made things worse for workers broadly, from a legislation perspective, I want to discuss other efforts they’ve taken to undermine public sector workers specifically.
First, let’s talk about the size of the public sector.
In their first budget, which they released in the autumn of 2019, the UCP government reported that in the 2018–2019 budget year, there was the equivalent of 210,407 people working full-time in the public sector in Alberta. That includes government workers, teachers, nurses, postsecondary workers, and so on. In their 2021–2022 budget, they reported only 206,728 public sector workers in the previous year. That means 3,679 full-time workers (or their equivalent) lost their jobs in just two years.
Let’s take a look specifically at those numbers for post-secondary education.
| 2018–2019 | 33,588 |
| 2020–2021 | 32,890 |
| Change | -698 |
What we see here is that during the first two years of the UCP’s first term in government, they got rid of roughly 700 full-time equivalent positions in the post-secondary system, which could include both teaching and support workers. It was clear in the first two years that they were intent on getting rid of workers in universities, colleges, and institutes.
Since 2020–2021, however, the number of postsecondary workers has increased by 851 full-time equivalent positions.
| 2018–2019 | 33,588 |
| 2025–2026 | 33,741 |
| Change | 153 |
Yet when we factor in the loss of nearly 700 positions in the first 2 years, we are left with an increase of just 153 full-time equivalent positions in post-secondary over the last 5 years.
That is an increase of 0.46%. Not 4.6%. 0.46%. Less than half a percent.
Plus, those 153 full-time equivalent positions were for all post-secondary institutions combined across the province. The annual average combined increase for Alberta postsecondary institutions has been about 31 positions per year for the entire province.
As well, the ratio of postsecondary workers to the total public sector has decreased, going from accounting for 15.96% of all public sector workers in 2018–2019 to 14.93% in 2025–2026, basically dropping a full percentage point.
None of this includes the layoffs announced recently at Keyano College, Norquest College, and SAIT or the suspended programmes announced earlier this year at Olds College and Red Deer Polytechnic.
But looking at just the percentage of total public sector workers doesn’t necessarily give us a full picture of staffing levels. After all, if they increased the number of full-time equivalent positions in all other public sector areas, that would throw off the ratio of post-secondary workers to all public sector workers. A better metric to review is how much these positions increased in comparison to population.
Alberta’s population between March 2019 and March 2025 increased by almost 15.5%, far outpacing growth in the postsecondary sector.
| 2018–2019 | 33,588 |
| 2025–2026 | 33,144 |
| 2025–2026 adjusted | 38,796 |
| Difference | 5,206 |
If we had kept up with population growth, we would have had over 5,200 more people working in post-secondary last year than we did. And that’s assuming we even had adequate numbers in 2018–2019 to begin with.
Now, let’s talk about wages.
First, how many of you have ever heard an Alberta politician claim that we have the highest wages in Canada? It’s a pretty common claim. It’s not true.
Well, it’s not true anymore.
You see, the highest median hourly wage in Canada actually goes to British Columbia, which has held that spot since 2023. Every month since February 2020, I’ve been writing a news article about the latest labour market statistics for Alberta, and not one time in 2024 nor in 2025 did Statistics Canada show that Alberta has the highest median wage in the country. They had usually been in second place behind BC, and occasionally third place behind Ontario. But even when Alberta had the highest wages, that statistic was covering up a worrying trend that everyone seemed to be ignoring. You see, BC didn’t suddenly shoot up to first place in terms of wages. They slowly inched their way to the top spot over time.
In 2014, BC actually had the fourth highest median hourly wages of any of the provinces, behind Alberta, Newfoundland and Labrador, and Saskatchewan. A year later, Newfoundland and Labrador dropped from second place to fourth place, pushing BC up to third. At the beginning of 2020, before the COVID-19 pandemic began, BC surpassed Saskatchewan, which had fallen to third place. BC stayed in second place until April 2023, when it tied Alberta for the top spot, bumping Alberta into second place 5 months later. And BC has been number one nearly every month ever since.
Had anyone been paying attention, they’d have noticed that while Alberta’s wages kept climbing, so did BC’s, but BC’s wages were growing faster than Alberta’s.
Between January 2014 and January 2025, BC’s median wage increased by $10 an hour, the largest increase of all the provinces. Alberta’s, however, increased by just $6.25 an hour, the second smallest increase in the country, just ahead of Newfoundland and Labrador.
The trend is even more pronounced when we look at real wages, wages adjusted for inflation.
During this same 11-year period, Alberta saw the fourth largest increase in the consumer price index: 30.95%. During this same 11-year period, Alberta saw the fourth largest increase in the consumer price index: 30.95%.
Alberta’s wages had increased by only 25%, so that means inflation was nearly 6 points higher than wage increases. In fact, Alberta was one of only 2 provinces where median wages increased more slowly than inflation, and of the two, we performed the worst.
This means that Alberta workers saw the largest reduction in real wages in the country. The median worker in Alberta effectively had their wages cut by nearly 6% over the last decade. And it doesn’t help that we now have the lowest minimum wage in Canada.
The Alberta government publishes monthly reports called collective agreement wage tables. It lists wages and raises over a 10-year period for each collective agreement.
I’ve gone through the most recent reports and averaged the annual increases for post-secondary collective agreements in Alberta since 2019, so you can get a sense of what these workers have been dealing with while also having to contend with skyrocketing inflation. This includes both faculty and support workers. Keep in mind that some public sector workplaces still have expired collective agreements. I have calculated wage increases at 0% in years not covered by a current collective agreement, which lowers the average for those years.
| 2019 | 0.37% |
| 2020 | 0.00% |
| 2021 | 0.02% |
| 2022 | 0.09% |
| 2023 | 2.62% |
| 2024 | 1.63% |
| 2025 | 1.61% |
| Combined | 6.43% |
Things have not been good for post-secondary workers during the last 7 years of wage increases.
Now, let’s compare it to annual inflation as of April in each year.
| 2019 | 0.37% | 2.20% |
| 2020 | 0.00% | -0.50% |
| 2021 | 0.02% | 3.30% |
| 2022 | 0.09% | 6.30% |
| 2023 | 2.62% | 4.30% |
| 2024 | 1.63% | 3.00% |
| 2025 | 1.61% | 1.50% |
| Combined | 6.34% | 19.1% |
As we can see, the average wage increase for postsecondary collective bargaining agreements has been below the rate of inflation in nearly every April since the UCP took power, other than in 2020, when we had brief deflation, and 2025, where postsecondary wage growth was barely higher than inflation. And that’s not even taking into account the several years of wage freezes postsecondary workers got under the NDP, which lowered real wages before the UCP even won the 2019 provincial election.
Between April 2019 and April 2025, Alberta has seen a combined inflation increase of 19.1%. The postsecondary sector did not manage to hit even a third of that amount for wage increases.
So, not only are we employing fewer workers in postsecondary than we should be, assuming we want to keep up with population growth, but also we’re not paying them enough for them to catch up to the cost of living. That means we’re expecting them to do more work for less pay.
Through legislative changes, job cuts, and reduced funding, the UCP government has systematically weakened labour protections, curbed union power, and constrained public sector growth—leaving essential services, such as postsecondary education, struggling to keep pace with population growth. Meanwhile, wage increases have lagged far behind inflation, eroding real income and diminishing workers’ purchasing power.
If we want a sustainable future for Alberta’s working class, we must address these structural issues, advocate for fair wages, and push for policies that truly support both workers and the vital public services on which all Albertans rely. But we can’t do it workplace by workplace. We must do it in solidarity with one another: unions supporting unions and private sector workers supporting public sector workers—and vice versa. A workplace of 35 workers going on strike for more than a 12% combined wage increase won’t be enough to get this government to change its unionbusting ideology. We must be united on a much broader scale.
Improving the material conditions of the working class will only come from workers standing together in solidarity and demanding it.
We didn’t get the 40-hour work week because one local of one union negotiated it into their collective agreement; we got it after hundreds of thousands of workers went on strike in May 1886 and demanded it.
We don’t have collective bargaining because one group of workers asked their employer nicely; we got it because tens of thousands of workers went on strike in Winnipeg in May 1919 and demanded it.
We didn’t get employment insurance because the government decided to be generous one day and give it to us. It was because thousands of workers boarded boxcars in June 1935 to travel to Ottawa and demand it.
About 4 years ago, our then 13-year-old came home from school and asked me, “What class are we?” I wasn’t sure what they were referring to, so I asked them what they meant. They clarified by saying, “You know, like, lower class, middle class, upper class . . .”. I responded, “Ah, well, we’re working class”. I then went on to tell them that there are only two classes—the owning class and the working class—and that the owning class made up the terms “lower class”, “middle class”, and “upper class” to pit workers against each other and erode class solidarity.
The owning class does everything they can to keep us divided because they know if we focus on each other, we won’t focus on them. They divide us based on skin colour so we don’t see they are lobbying governments to take away our rights. They divide us based on gender so we don’t see them robbing us of our wages to boost profits. They divide us based on sexual orientation so we don’t see them turning full-time jobs into multiple part-time jobs. They divide us based on ability so we don’t see them holding back wages while inflation keeps increasing. They divide us based on ethnicity so we don’t see them exploiting cheap labour to avoid paying us properly. They divide us because they know if we’re united, we have all the power.
My struggle isn’t just my struggle. Your struggle isn’t just your struggle. Public sector worker struggle isn’t just a public sector worker struggle. Private sector worker struggle isn’t just a private sector worker struggle. White collar worker struggle isn’t just a white collar worker struggle. Blue collar worker struggle isn’t just a blue collar worker struggle. Service worker struggle isn’t just a service worker struggle. Our struggle is a shared struggle. It is a class struggle.
When I stood with striking postal workers in 2018, it wasn’t because I was a postal worker; it was because their struggle is a class struggle. When I stood with picketing University of Lethbridge support workers in 2019, it wasn’t because I was a university support worker; it was because their struggle is a class struggle. When I participated in the wildcat strike in front of Chinook Regional Hospital in 2020, it wasn’t because I was a hospital worker; it was because their struggle is a class struggle. When I stood with picketing Lethbridge nurses in 2021, it wasn’t because I was a nurse; it was because their struggle is a class struggle. When I joined the University of Lethbridge Faculty Association strike in downtown Lethbridge in 2022, it wasn’t because I was a professor at the U of L, it was because their struggle is a class struggle. When I joined the picket line of striking PSAC workers in 2023, it wasn’t because I was a federal government worker; it was because their struggle is a class struggle. When I stood on the picket line of rail workers in 2024, it wasn’t because I was a rail worker; it was because their struggle is a class struggle.
Class struggle is an ongoing struggle. It will be there as long as capitalism is the primary economic aspect of our lives. There will be no single win where we can say that the working class has won against the owning class. We may win a battle here and there, but the owning class—including the government as an employer—will continue winning this war. This is why ongoing class solidarity—not just workplace solidarity, or local solidarity, or even union solidarity—will be necessary for the long-term survival, let alone elevation, of the working class.
The government has immense power to improve our material conditions. At the snap of a finger, the government can create jobs without waiting for market demand. They have the power to build and staff schools. They have the power to build and staff hospitals. I’m sure everyone here can think of a highway in Alberta that can be twinned. Even if you are pro oil and gas, the provincial government has the power to drill for natural gas and mine bitumen, to refine it, and to convert it into all sorts of products, ranging from retail fuel to plastics and medical supplies. They have the power to increase worker wages. They have the power to build housing. They have the power to fully fund post-secondary education, eliminating tuition and administrative fees. Not only could we have more jobs, higher wages, and better housing, but our education, health, and living standards would improve as well.
But the only way the government will do anything like this is if we stand in solidarity and demand it.
It’s time for workers of all ethnicities to come together in solidarity. It’s time for workers of all genders and all sexualities to come together in solidarity. It’s time for workers of all ability levels to come together in solidarity. It’s time for public sector workers and private sector workers to come together in solidarity. It’s time for white collar workers and blue collar workers to come together in solidarity. It’s time for right-wing workers and left-wing workers to come together in solidarity.
In solidarity, we have power. In solidarity, we get what’s ours. In solidarity, we win.
Solidarity.
