Video: Medicine Hat teachers continue to rally on Wednesday in the city and Thursday at the Alberta Legislature

Thursday from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m., a “Fight for Public Education” rally will be held at the Alberta Legislature in Edmonton.

Michael Jerred, president of Alberta Teachers’ Association Local 1, which represents the teachers of the Medicine Hat Public School Division said the area will be represented at this rally.

“This is all being done by volunteer local presidents, every single rally across the province. But this one in particular, because it’s in front of the legislature, is going to be quite large,” Jerred said.

“The last one, I think, was well over 20,000 people, and they’ll blow through those numbers today. But for Medicine Hat, we rented a charter. All three locals, Prairie Rose, the Catholics, and Medicine Hat Public, have folks on the bus,” he added.

“Then we’ve got even more folks who are driving up with folks from their school, their families, so they can take part in it. I would say we’ve got probably anywhere from 60 to 100 people from Medicine Hat heading up there for the rally.”

Alberta’s legislature returned Thursday, with a throne speech to kick off the fall sitting.

Jerred said there is importance to being in the public during a province-wide strike.

“Once this moved into the political arena, we knew that we needed to make sure that we maintain the public support that we felt we had into this action,” Jerred said.

“To continue to be out there in the public eye, I mean, the honks from the horns every day that we’ve done this walk, it’s actually, it’s just heartwarming,” he added.

“Teachers don’t want to be doing this, so feeling the public support has been actually really healthy each day that we’ve done these walks locally.”

Negotiations between the province and the ATA have hit an impasse, and teachers have been off the job since Oct. 6.

“The reality of it is that it’s probably taken 10 to 15 years to get here, and it’ll take a while to get out. It’s not a one-contract type of solution, but what the government has put in front of us feels like more decline,” Jerred said.

“That’s why you see across the province the solidarity of teachers saying, we need this curve to change directions, because what this looks like in another cycle, it’s not going to be very good,” he added.

“When you start actually looking at what a thousand teachers in Alberta means on an annual basis, it’s quite insignificant. There are well over 2,000 schools, and so you’re talking about fractions of human beings, so it doesn’t really address the issues.”

Premier Danielle Smith announced Thursday that they will table back-to-work legislation on Monday if a deal isn’t reached.

The ATA received notice Thursday morning that Bill 2, the Back to School Act, was ready.

“It really demonstrates to us that they had no intention of ever negotiating,” Jerred said.

“We will be very interested to see what this legislation looks like.”

by Jesse Gill

Video: Medicine Hat teachers continue to rally on Wednesday in the city and Thursday at the Alberta Legislature

Our Community