Last week, I presented at the 2026 convention for the Alberta organization of the Canadian Union of Public Employees. Here are my remarks
Introduction
Hey, fellow workers. My name is Kim Siever. 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. Just a heads up that I have asthma, which can be a challenge sometimes when I speak for a long period. I tell you this only so you know that if I start coughing partway through my remarks, it is not contagious.
When I was invited to speak at this convention, I was not given a specific topic. All I was told was that the theme would be “Our Work. Our Power. Our Future.”. I assumed that as long as my remarks stayed within that theme, I was free to say whatever I wanted.
The thing I like the most about this theme is the repetition of the word our, emphasizing the work, power, and future belongs to not just one person. Rather, it is all a collective effort.
And that collective effort is what I want to talk about today. Specifically, I will share 3 examples of CUPE members working together to exercise collective power to protect a shared material future.
Ontario education workers
First, I want to start with an example from Ontario.
In August 2022, the collective agreement expired for over 55,000 education workers in Ontario’s public and Catholic education systems. These workers included educational assistants, custodians, secretaries, early childhood educators, and workers employed in maintenance, libraries, and IT.
CUPE represented these education workers, and they submitted notice to bargain to the employers two months earlier. Several months prior to that, CUPE had engaged with their members directly to gauge priorities going into bargaining. Mark Hancock, CUPE’s national president at the time, said that they “were determined to fight for their first meaningful wage increase in many years”.
Unfortunately, the governing PC Party refused to negotiate in good faith.
They had offered the workers raises of 2% per year for those making less than $40,000 and 1.25% for everyone else. CUPE had countered with 11.7% per year, especially considering they had just received 3 years of wage freezes. The final offer to the workers was a tiny increase to 2.5% for those under $43,000 and just 1.5% for everyone else. That was not enough.
In less than 3 months after serving their notice to bargain, these workers were participating in a strike vote overseen by the Ontario Labour Relations Board. Over 82% of eligible education workers participated in that strike vote, and of those, 96.5% voted in favour of striking.
The workers’ bargaining team tried to leverage that strong strike mandate in negotiations, but the Ford government refused to budge. So, the workers served strike notice, and their strike began on 4 November.
The government introduced back-to-work legislation, including forcing a new four-year contract with inadequate wages and worker concessions, taking away the right to bargain local issues, and making strike action illegal, punishable by $4,000 fines per worker per day and $500,000 per day for the union. On top of that, in a move that would be copied by Alberta 3 years later, the government removed the constitutional right of the workers to challenge the legislation by invoking the notwithstanding clause.
But that was not enough to deter these workers.
They knew that with numbering more than 55,000, they were the ones holding all the power. So they stuck to their guns and went on strike, as scheduled, on 4 November, the day after Ford’s anti-worker legislation received royal assent. And they had a little help from their friends. CUPE leaders across the country pledged support for their union siblings in Ontario, including making plans to join them on the line in Ontario. Union leaders throughout Canada, outside of CUPE, promised logistical and financial support. The Canadian Labour Congress and the Ontario Federation of Labour planned escalating actions in all sectors of the Ontario economy, including a commitment to a general strike. Workers across the province were ready to shut things down to stand up against the Ontario government’s attack on the constitutional rights of workers.
And it worked.
Like I said, the anti-worker legislation went into effect on the 3rd. By the end of the weekend, on the 7th, Doug Ford and his government rescinded their Bill 28, and the union called off their strike action. Negotiations resumed, and the workers reached a collective agreement that gave all workers a $1 annual wage increase, which averaged out to roughly 3.6%.
Air Canada flight attendants
Another example, this time on the federal level..
Roughly a year ago, the most recent collective agreement between Air Canada and their flight attendants expired. Even though bargaining between the two parties began two months prior, they were unable to reach a tentative agreement before the previous one expired. In fact, they still had not reached an agreement by last August, 5 months after expiry and 8 months after negotiations started.
There were two main issues that hindered reaching an agreement.
The first was the wage increase. Air Canada claimed they were offering a 38% increase over 4 years, with a 25% increase in the first year alone. CUPE, which represents these workers, claimed that this increase was for all compensation combined, not just wages. Plus, they said it was below inflation, below market value, and below minimum wage.
The second hurdle was unpaid work. For the last several decades, flight attendants in Canada and the United States have been paid when the plane is moving, what is sometimes called “block to block time”. Any labour performed before the plane moves or after it stops, such as helping passengers board and unboard, is unpaid labour. This is sometimes called “groundwork”.
CUPE estimated during a public relations campaign last summer that the average flight attendant employed by Air Canada was performing 35 hours of unpaid labour a month. So, effectively, Air Canada was getting a week’s labour per month out of every flight attendant. For free.
These workers were tired of performing uncompensated labour, and they wanted that changed in their new collective agreement. In Canada, Porter Airlines and Pascan Aviation were already paying their flight attendants for their labour during the boarding process. In the United States, Delta Air Lines, American Airlines, and Alaska Airlines had been paying flight attendants for at least a portion of their block-to-block time, and United Airlines in their contract negotiations last year offered to pay for boarding time labour.
After the two parties failed to reach an agreement and with a 99.7% strike mandate from the flight attendants, their bargaining team served a 72-hour strike notice with Air Canada, which responded with their own lockout notice. Two days later, on 15 August, Air Canada had cancelled 623 of their flights, and all 700 were cancelled on the 16th.
The day before the strike, Air Canada proposed arbitration to the workers’ bargaining team, who rejected it. Air Canada had also begged the jobs minister, Patty Hadju, to use the Canadian Industrial Relations Board to interfere with the workers’ constitutionally guaranteed right to strike, just as the Liberals had done 6 other times since being elected in 2015.
And Hadju was happy to oblige, invoking section 107 of the Canada Labour Code just hours after the strike began and directing the industrial relations board, who was chaired at the time by Air Canada’s former legal counsel, to force arbitration and end the strike.
The next day, the industrial relations board ordered the flight attendants back to work, but they refused, calling the Liberal interference unconstitutional. On the 18th, now two days after the strike began, the CIRB declared the strike continuation unlawful and told the workers they had until noon that day to return to work. In a news conference later that day, Mark Hancock responded to the CIRB threat by saying, “We will not be returning to the skies this afternoon. If it means folks like me going to jail, then so be it. If it means our union being fined, then so be it.”
Unions from across the country stood in solidarity with CUPE’s position to hold the line, including the Public Service Alliance of Canada, the Ontario Public Service Employees Union, the Union of Canadian Transportation Employees, the Ontario Nurses’ Association, Unifor, the BC Federation of Labour, the National Union of Public and General Employees, the Health Sciences Association of British Columbia, the United Food and Commercial Workers, the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada, the Society of United Professionals, and—well—you get the idea.
But it was more than just words. Member unions of the Canadian Labour Congress vowed to provide financial contributions to “assist with the legal and other costs related to the Air Canada Component of CUPE’s decision to defy the Minister’s order”, coordinate a fight-back campaign, and disseminate information on demonstrations and other actions to ensure maximum impact, including having the labour movement—using their words—“respond swiftly” to any legal action the government took against those workers.
And it worked.
Air Canada came back to the table with a mediator, and after 9 hours overnight, the two parties reached a tentative agreement that the bargaining team for the workers felt that they could present to their fellow workers for a ratification vote. And vote they did.
Over 99% of the members participated in the vote, and of those, over 99% rejected the wage proposal. Bargaining went to mediation and later to arbitration, and the arbitrator ultimately sided with the employer, forcing the very agreement the workers democratically rejected. It sucks that they do not have the collective agreement they deserved, but without pressure from the broader labour movement and CUPE’s refusal to give in, Air Canada would not have returned to the table and changed their offer, which included paying a portion of groundwork (70% by the end of the agreement), and the government would not have backed off on making striking illegal and forcing arbitration.
Education support workers in Alberta
The third example I want to share with you occurred right here in Alberta.
It all started in Fort McMurray back in September 2024.
Education workers in that community are represented by CUPE. They’re employed with two school divisions—Fort McMurray Public School Division and Fort McMurray Roman Catholic Separate School Division—and belong to separate CUPE locals: Local 2545 and Local 2559, respectively.
They include education assistants, administrative support workers, child care services workers, custodians, tradespeople, library workers, IT workers, food services workers, and so on.
Workers organized with Local 2545 numbers about 450, and they have been waiting for over 3 years for a new contract. Their last one expired in August 2021. Local 2559 workers, on the other hand, numbered about 425 people, and their most recent contract expired a year before that, in August 2020.
On top of that, Local 2559 workers hadn’t had a raise since 2015, and the last raise Local 2545 workers received was 1.25% back in 2020. Over an 11-year period, Local 2545 workers had 8 years of wages freezes and Local 2559 workers had wage freezes in all but one of those years. During that same period, they received a combined 3.25% and 2%. Over 11 years.
When we average it out over the entire period, we see that workers in Local 2559 got an annual increase of 0.18%, while Local 2545 workers averaged 0.30% per year.
It doesn’t take much to realize that neither group would have received enough of an increase to keep up with inflation, but let’s look at it anyhow.
In September 2012, Alberta’s consumer price index sat at 127.8, but by September 2023, it had ballooned to 166.0, an increase of 38.2 points, or 29.89%. So, while these workers had been getting meagre raises of between 2% and 3.25% since September 2012, inflation had nearly hit 30% during the same period.
As a result, these workers have received a cut to real wages—wages adjusted for inflation. And not a small one either. When adjusting for their tiny raises and inflation, workers in the Catholic school division received a real wage cut of 27.89%, and the public school workers had theirs cut by 26.64%.
For every $1,000 these workers made in September 2012, it was worth just $721.10 to $733.60 as of September 2023.
To put it another way, if these workers spent $1,000 on goods and services in September 2012, those same goods and services would’ve cost them between $1,266.40 and $1,278.90 in September 2023, depending on which school district they worked for.
How can you support yourself, let alone a family, when costs are skyrocketing like that?
These education workers were growing tired of being ignored. They had been trying for years to negotiate a new contract, but it just was not working. So they went on strike. Or, at least, they tried to.
In September 2024, these workers voted 99% to go on strike, but when they attempted it, the provincial government forced the workers to the Dispute Inquiry Board, which effectively pauses any striking for at least 30 days.
After that pause expired, the workers had to vote on the results of the Dispute Inquiry Board, which they did in November 2024. A majority of the workers who participated in the vote rejected it. Then they tried, once again, to bring both school boards back to the bargaining table, but they refused, saying that they had nothing new to offer.
So, the workers gave their employers a strike notice a second time and were on the picket line a few days later. They started with a rotating strike, but after the school boards brought in scab workers and paid them more than they had been paying the CUPE workers, they escalated it to a full strike.
It did not stop there though. Workers right here in Edmonton joined them.
Two CUPE locals—3550 and 474—represent education support workers in the Edmonton public school system. Their most recent collective agreement at the time also had expired in the summer of 2020.
These workers had been waiting a long time for a new contract, but they had been waiting even longer for a decent wage increase. In their last contracts, these workers got between 1.25% and 1.50%. That was not per year either; that was over the entire contract. And it had been 4 years since they got the final increase.
During those 4 years, inflation got out of control, rising by 25.06%, which means these workers saw a cut to real wages of 23.56% and 23.81%. Inflation was so high and their wage increases were so low that their real wages dropped by nearly 24%.
Which brings us to one of the main reasons negotiations went on for over 4 years: the Edmonton school board was offering these workers 2.75% over 4 years, which is what was being offered to most public sector bargaining units at the time.
That’s pathetic. Real wages are down by nearly 24% and you are going to offer your workers a little more than a tenth of that?
If we add up the raises in the previous contracts and the raises the school board originally proposed, we have a combined increase of 4.00% and 4.25% since 2016. If we apply the 25.06% inflation to those numbers, we end up with a real wage cut of 20.81% and 21.06%.
Now to be fair, this was not really the fault of the Edmonton Public School Board. The Provincial Bargaining and Compensation Office was pulling the strings.
The Provincial Bargaining and Compensation Office (previously called the Public Bargaining Coordination Office) was created by the NDP in 2015. They ensure that government funded entities implement government mandates during bargaining.
The NDP used the PBCO during 2017 negotiations, and the UCP willingly kept the office running during the 2020 bargaining season and again in last year’s bargaining season.
Having the PBCO dictating what occurs at the bargaining table interferes with the workers’ ability to negotiate directly with their employer. It also encourages the employer to participate in bad faith bargaining by putting responsibility on the government for proposals.
It was the PBCO that told the Edmonton school board what to offer these education support workers, and the school board had their hands tied.
Well, these workers were exhausted. They had had enough of bad faith offers and finally held a strike vote in October 2024. 92% of the workers with Local 3550 participated in their strike vote, with 97% of them saying they were done and were ready to go on strike. Local 474 also had a strike mandate of 97%.
This scared the school board. So they called the workers’s bargaining teams back to negotiations, but they never sweetened their offer. In fact, they actually made the offer worse. They wanted to keep their wage increase offer the same but spread it out over 8 years instead of 5. Can you believe that?
So, the more than 4,000 education support workers went on strike.
More workers began to join them and their Fort McMurray colleagues. By March 2025, over 7,000 CUPE members employed by 9 school districts throughout the province were on strike. And others were getting close to joining them. For example, that same month, education support workers in my hometown of Lethbridge rejected mediation and were getting ready to go on strike.
And then the government caved.
They saw that CUPE members, once again, were becoming more and more powerful every week, and they could not be ignored anymore. So they changed their offer.
The final offer for each school district varied because workers in some districts had gone longer than others without a new collective agreement. But one thing was consistent in all the tentative agreements: 4 increases of 3% per year between 2024 and 2027 (or $1.25 an hour in 2025 and 2027, whichever was higher).
That was at least 12% over 4 years, which is way better than less than 4% over 4 years.
But that is not even all the good news. That 12% over 4 years ended up becoming the standard in nearly every other public sector collective agreement that has been ratified since then. And CUPE power made it happen.
Conclusion
We must remember, however, to not come away from these three examples with the idea that solidarity is a one-time thing. Solidarity brought us wins 100 years ago after years—and even decades—of struggle. And decades later, we have seen these wins eroded away. Coming together as an individual local, as a collective union, and as the broader working class is the only way to protect those wins and to get in a few more new ones.
In closing, I just want to say solidarity with CUPE long-term care workers in Nova Scotia, CUPE education workers in Manitoba, and CUPE municipal workers in BC, who recently voted in favour of strike mandates; CUPE municipal workers in Québec who held a 48-hour strike earlier this month; and CUPE post-secondary workers in Nova Scotia who went on strike earlier this month to protest not receiving a wage increase since 1984.
Solidarity.
Sources:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keeping_Students_in_Class_Act
- https://cupe.ca/national-presidents-report-september-2022-december-2022
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Air_Canada_flight_attendants_strike
- https://albertaworker.ca/news/air-canada-flight-attendants-hold-strike-vote/
- https://psacunion.ca/solidarity-cupe-protect-right-strike-and-bargain
- https://opseu.org/news/opseu-sefpo-stands-in-solidarity-with-cupe-flight-attendants-at-air-canada/276856/
- https://ucte-ucet.ca/solidarity-with-cupe-flight-attendants/
- https://www.unifor.org/news/all-news/unifor-solidarity-air-canada-component-cupe
- https://www.facebook.com/bcfed/posts/our-full-solidarity-is-with-air-canada-component-of-cupe-and-the-publics-behind-/1152379946923345/
- https://nupge.ca/2025/statement-of-support-from-nupge-to-air-canada-flight-attendants/
- https://hsabc.org/news/solidarity-air-canada-flight-attendants
- https://gounion.ca/news/solidarity-congratulations-to-air-canada-flight-attendants-who-stood-strong/
- https://pipsc.ca/news-issues/announcements/pipsc-stands-in-solidarity-air-canada-flight-attendants
- https://www.thesociety.ca/flight_attendants_deserve_the_right_to_strike
- https://canadianlabour.ca/canadas-labour-movement-stands-united-against-government-violation-of-workers-rights/
- https://albertaworker.ca/news/education-workers-get-12-55-29-42-raise/
- https://albertaworker.ca/news/education-support-workers-ratify-new-contracts/
- https://albertaworker.ca/news/fort-mac-ed-workers-waiting-years-for-new-contract/
- https://albertaworker.ca/news/edmonton-education-workers-vote-to-strike/
- https://albertaworker.ca/news/edmonton-area-ed-workers-file-strike-notice/
- https://albertaworker.ca/news/grande-yellowhead-ed-workers-vote-82-to-strike/
