The confrontation between the Alberta government and its 51,000 teachers, with each side accusing the other of lying, will become a total advertising war.
The Office of the Minister of Finance, Nate Horner, confirmed on Wednesday that he plans to launch an advertising campaign to push his side in the dispute, counteracting a campaign of the Alberta Masters Association that has been ongoing for weeks.
“The Government must now correct the false narrative that ATA has created,” said Horner in a statement.
His office said he is still determining in what media the ads will be, how much they will cost and what day they will be launched, but those details will arrive soon.
Earlier this week, Minister Danielle Smith said that her government is aware that the Teacher Union is obtaining its position through various media, even in cinemas.
It is the second week of the school year, and the teachers in Alberta still have no contract. Emily Fitzpatrick of CBC takes us through what you need to know about possible labor actions.
“We are going to get [our] Perspective too and we hope that the hearts and minds of teachers and parents will be gathed, “Smith told journalists on Monday.
“We want to be fair.”
Salaries, classroom overcrowding
The province and the Association of Teachers have not met since last week to discuss a collective agreement for educators in public, separate and Francophone schools throughout the province.
The Association of Teachers has established a strike deadline for October 6. Without an agreement, teachers will reach the picket lines, interrupting classes for more than 700,000 students in 2,500 schools.
While there are no conversations at the negotiating table, the two parties have been trying to gain public support through public statements and, in the case of teachers, through advertisements.
The union has used advertising, commercial and television advertising fences, testimonies of teachers in social networks and postcards and grass signs to share their message this summer. The issue is overcrowded classrooms and how the province must intensify to correct them.
The main problems for negotiation are the salaries and the overcrowding of the classroom.
The Government of the United Conservative Party of Smith said that it has offered to hire 3,000 teachers for three years, build more schools worth thousands and deliver what calls a generous salary increase of 12 percent for teachers for four years.
Smith also said that the coffers are tight with the province ready to execute a deficit of $ 6.5 billion this year.
False claims or the facts
The Association of Teachers, directed by President Jason Schilling, said that the offer does not properly fix overcrowding in schools and that the salary agreement does not compensate for years of little or any salary adjustment and inflation.
Schilling said the union has proposed a counteroffie.
Both parties are also accusing the other of misrepresenting the facts.
The province said the teachers are deceiving the public by saying that the Government’s negotiators are not given a free hand to negotiate, while the teachers said they were told that the non -wage problems were out of the negotiating table.
Horner announced this week that the union had been taken to the Labor Board on its false claims.
Schilling retreated, saying that the union is not lying, and government negotiators have said that non -wages are out of the table.
Schilling described the frivolous complaint and said that the government has indicated that it does not want to negotiate until the matter is resolved before the Labor Board is resolved.
Two work experts say that the impending government advertising campaign suggests that the two parties are very separate and that cold relations are already frozen.
“What is different here is the tone [the government] He is taking, “said Steven Tufts, a labor geographer at the University of York in Toronto.
“Accusing the union of being dishonest, accusing teachers of lying to people, accusing them of misleading wrong information and saying that they will leave the record in an advertising campaign increases the tone and I do not believe that the negotiation process progresses.”
Jason Foster, a professor of labor relations at the University of Athabasca de Alberta, said that the next advertising campaign conversations are leaving public relations in the background.
“Traditionally, governments know that the agreements are made at the table,” said Foster.
“What the advertisement announcement says is that they are less interested in sitting at the table and discovering an agreement and more concerned about political optics for them, which worries me more than more than [teachers] They will end in a strike in a couple of weeks. “
Tufts said it is common for public sector unions to campaign publicly for their cause.
“That is a sustainable or better practice,” he said.
“The unions do not necessarily receive the same attention that a prime minister would receive in the public sphere.”
Foster said the government must be careful with what it presents in its advertising campaign because it has limitations.
“Communication must be objectively precise,” said Foster.
“AND [as] the government, you cannot see that you try to negotiate directly with the [union] Members. That would be an unfair labor practice. “
