Has Danielle Smith ever had an original thought or is she just pulling everything she says out of the MAGA playbook?
Reopen the government Get back to work and we can negotiate to protect healthcare for millions of Americans you concerns. - - MAGA Mike Johnston Danielle Smith
Counterpoint: Fuck off, Danielle Smith.
The only thing that comes out of her mouth is shit. And the only thing she wants to go in her mouth is trumps cumshot.
The Calgary Herald is American owned media pretending to be Canadian, infiltrating Canadian culture and politics.
I’m gunna start flagging this posts as spam soon
That’s not how strikes work, and it cannot be allowed to become the way the ruling class expects to negotiate.
What an untrustworthy weasel.
I hope this goes to court. The UCP needs to be taught a lesson.
Federal government has lead the way with complete ghosting and forced back to work legislation, so UCP are happy to be just like the Libs the hate so much.
You know what? We’re gonna strike even harder.
I’ve heard rumours of AUPE joining in. They’ve been without a contract for a year and a half.
Address the issues first!
Her name is Marlaina Smith. She wants people to use the names they were born with.
This is not a black and white issue. On one side the teachers are definitely facing classrooms that are increasingly more complex. There are more kids who have individualized programs, there are more kids who have English as a second language, and there are more with mental health issues. Teachers dont have the resources to deal with EVERY need and still be able to cover all the curriculum they are required to teach. They do need more help, even more than a wage increase.
On the other hand, the government also knows that a 12% raise for all teachers over 4 years is not unreasonable, (and some would get up to 17% as the grid would be equalized across the province giving a bump to some lower paid divisions) but they dont want to commit to classroom size caps because of the additional cost of constructing new schools and the extra staff when they already have committed to building 90 new schools and spending nearly 9 billion on those projects. They committed to funding 3000 more teachers but finding them and more Educational Assistants is going to be tough.
They also know that there are other unions looking at what the nurses got (20% over 4 years) and what the teachers are asking for and then looking at the budget, which is projected to be over 6 billion dollars DEFICIT and know that if EVERY union asks for that much more the deficit is going to be considerably more next year. That money has to come from somewhere and no one likes higher taxes.
Then you gotta add in the political factor that the ATA and the NDP are closely aligned and this isn’t just teachers vs the gov, there is definitely a UCP vs the NDP subplot going on as the NDP looks toward gaining ground for the next election.
None of this is cut and dried. And the whole “Danielle stupid/MAGA sucks” rhetoric is ridiculous and naive. Do some research and make an informed comment.
On the other hand, the government also knows that a 12% raise for all teachers over 4 years is not unreasonable,
Tax/stop subsidizing the fucking Oil and Gas industry to the tune of more than a billion dollars per year and pay your fucking teachers.
Giving money to an industry that is killing the planet THAT’s unreasonable, not paying teachers more.
IMPLEMENT A SALES TAX.
A sales tax is a regressive tax. None of us should have sales taxes to begin with. Instead, they should cancel subsidies to oil&gas companies and start taxing them appropriately for the climate killing criminal enterprises that they are.
I’m on board with that too honestly.
They committed to funding 3000 more teachers but finding them and more Educational Assistants is going to be tough.
It isn’t that people don’t want to be teachers at EAs. It’s that they don’t want to be teachers and EAs for shit wages with little to no support and huge classes. If you want people to become teachers giving them good working conditions, good benefits, and good pay.
It’s really very simple.
You have to pay people what they think their work is worth or they won’t work for you.
Its not ‘simple’. Teachers generally dont get into the profession for the pay because its not terrible, but it does need a raise, they’ve fallen quite far behind inflation. Their benefits are actually pretty good - dental, health, massages, counseling, paid leave for medical, family, bereavement, etc, its pretty comprehensive.
And the job has a lot of security which many jobs dont. So that part’s pretty good.
But the class size thing is anything but simple. A Kindergarten class with 22 kids is 22 kids. Likely a few learning issues in there but not really defined at that point. But then you get to senior high and now you have options. Might be 30 in an English class, but only 15 who are taking Band class. Or 10 in Biology but 25 in Chemistry, so how do you set a “class size” for senior high because not all kids take all the same classes.
And then comes complexity. Any teacher can tell you that a class of 30 kids who are all similar ‘average learners’ is far easier to teach than a smaller class with 20 students where 10 of them have individualized programs, 5 of them are new to Canada and dont speak much English and 2 of them have severe learning issues and need Educational Assistants because of extreme behaviour issues. So what’s a good class size? 20? Or 30? It gets tricky and definitely not “very simple”
It is very simple. If you don’t pay people enough or their working conditions aren’t good enough they won’t work for you. You may only think that the work is worth $X but if people won’t work for anything less than $Y then you’re going to have trouble getting people to work for you if you only pay $X.
The Alberta government could stop spending $30 billion on corporate welfare and instead spend that paying teachers what they are worth. Of course, ideologues like Smith don’t like high quality fact based public education because better educated people tend to be more liberal.
You’re framing this like its mostly a salary issue. Their pay is the lesser part of their complaints. They want a raise yes, but that’s not the bigger issue: its about the increasingly complex challenges in the classroom. Even if they got a big raise those complexities would still exist and THAT is what makes the job hard to do. And that’s the part that’s not an “simple” fix.
You said that they needed more teachers and more EAs. That takes money. Being paid a lot more makes you willing to deal with a lot more. The old, “They don’t pay me enough for this shit” refrain comes to mind. If they took the $30 billion they are handing out in corporate welfare and put it into education it would go a LONG way to solving the problem.
