Abhorrent Solution IV: turning the Alberta Teacher's strike into a win

The Alberta provincial government just passed "Bill 2: The Back to School Act" to end a three week strike by Alberta's teachers. The act itself is draconian: orders the teachers back to work, establishes significant penalties for arguing with the government on it, and imposes a contract rejected by about 90% of those teachers who voted on it nearly a month ago. Other unions are talking about organizing a general strike in protest, the teachers union will almost certainly win the court cases coming out of this, and it seems likely that a majority of teachers across the province are increasingly willing to believe that the governing party is comprised of rural yokels who hate education, don't understand the issues, and need to be replaced by progressives at the next election.

I have been convinced ever since the last contract expired in 2024, that the suits, experts, and shiny shoe people advising both sides have wanted, and worked toward getting, first a strike and then the nastiest possible settlement - because that benefits the NDP (the idealogue wing of Canada's liberal/progressive party). In that context it looks like they got exactly what they wanted: an easy majority of 51,000 or so teachers thinking themselves wronged by the conservatives in power along with a supportive stream of anti-government analysis by media "experts" -none of whom have, of course, any idea what the modern classroom is like nor, for that matter, what it takes to be a rural yokel these days.

Point out to teachers and media people that the NDP is the only beneficiary here, that more rural yokels now have MBAs and Ag Eng. degrees than you find B.A.s working in FIRE, media, or the local McDonald's, and you get a blank stare. Point out that the teacher's union accepted a far worse four year contract in 2016 from the only NDP government the province has ever had the misfortune to elect, and people who got screwed over then will defend the NDP - or blame the previous conservative government. Ask them who benefited from the strike and most will rail against the government's heavy handed actions - but I think the right answer is quite obvious because the government didn't benefit, the teachers didn't benefit, while kids and their parents lost - but the NDP strengthened its base in education and got an emotion laden mess good for anti-conservative rants, judgments, headlines, and editorials all the way to the next provincial elections.

So how can conservatives in general, and Premier Danielle Smith in particular, turn this disaster into a win? Not so easy; but possible, I think, by blaming the union and then acting to correct the problem. Specifically, imagine what happens if Danielle Smith makes a speech, with the education minister (Demetrios Nicolaides) by her side, in which she says:

1. we understand that teachers are unhappy, we understand why, and we want to fix it;
2. the union people simply would not negotiate. We had a deal last spring; their members very narrowly rejected it; we corrected what we understood were the issues, but they were utterly intransigent and, this fall, over 90% of voting teachers rejected the revised agreement without, we think, understanding either the changes we'd made or, really, what we offered.
3. the union's strike cost teacher's nearly a month on salaries and took the kids out of school for over three weeks - and that's hard on everybody: students, parents, and teachers. So we ordered them back to work and imposed the contract as previously offered just to buy some time.
4. but we know that process was unfair - so we will be making some changes:
   1. bringing the grid adjustment forward from the January 2027 date in the contract to January 2026 - so almost every teacher, and particularly the newer teachers, get significantly more money sooner - but we're applying it only to people who spend at least 3.5 hours per day in the classroom - benefiting teachers, not administrators.
   2. classroom complexity is a major issue - today's classes aren't full of well behaved kids eager to learn. Maybe half the average class looks like that; the rest: usually several special needs kids, some smart kids whom no-one ever taught to read - even in the higher grades - some very smart kids who are simply bored, and some who are just naturally disruptive and get away with it because teachers can't effectively discipline them. So we're striking a committee - I know, another committee, but this one has a strong mandate and a real deadline: next spring, May, 2026 - to find ways to reduce classroom complexity starting in September of next year. I don't know yet who will be on it, we'll be working with the school boards and the union, if they want to help, but actual classroom teachers will have a majority voice.
   3. class size is another major issue - one we're already doing everything we can to help with. We're building new schools, putting temporary classrooms where we can, and hiring more teachers and more educational assistants - but Ottawa dumped over a hundred thousand new students on us over the last eighteen months of the Trudeau government - so we don't have enough classrooms, can't build new ones fast enough, and can't recruit enough new teachers.

      In the short term we're doing everything we can: tempting teachers out of retirement or back to full time - plus we're looking at ways to pay teachers more for the extra time and effort larger, more diverse, classes require. I don't know yet how that's going to work, if it's going to work, but we're looking into it.

5. So we're coping, more or less, but changes are coming - changes aimed at being fair to teachers, fair to students, and delivering on our responsibilities to parents.

What happens if she does this? teachers, and students, get a big win; the NDP loses a major electoral lever; union officials lose no matter what they do; and, eventually, education improves across the province as diversity, DIE, and Woke get driven out of the system.