For years I’ve wondered whether unions had outlived their usefulness and were simply using their collective bargaining power to crank up wages and benefits at the expense of…well…who knows what. But the wildcat strike arising out of the Edmonton Remand Centre labour dispute proved me wrong. Edmonton Remand Centre The
Continue readingTag: Alberta Union of Provincial Employees
Alberta Diary: Premier explains Alberta politics to children: ‘Opposition Leader, what big teeth you have!’
Alberta Premier Alison Redford, right, meets Opposition Leader Danielle Smith, left, while on her way to announcing a new school opening. Actual Alberta politicians may not be exactly as illustrated. Below: The real Premier Redford, Alberta Union of Provincial Employees President Guy Smith. Once upon a time, while Alberta’s premier
Continue readingAlberta Diary: All lawbreakers will be punished … unless they happen to be Alberta Conservatives
“’Ave you got a leesence for your minkey?” An investigator for Elections Alberta pauses momentarily in his probe of political donations made to the Progressive Conservative Party by seeing-eye monkeys. If you don’t get it, I can’t help you. Actual Elections Alberta investigators by now have likely been transferred back
Continue readingAlberta Diary: The government blinked: Defiant Alberta jail guards have every right to declare victory
The picket line during the five-day strike by Alberta Correctional Peace Officers, which ended last night. Below: Another scene from the strike; Deputy Premier Thomas Lukaszuk; AUPE President Guy Smith. Even without last night’s deal with the Alberta government, Alberta’s defiant jail guards would have been entitled to declare a
Continue readingAlberta Diary: This just in: Deal reached, victory and vindication for striking Alberta jail guards
Supporters and striking Alberta jail guards on the picket line yesterday. Illegally striking Alberta Union of Provincial Employees jail guards have reached an agreement with the government of Premier Alison Redford in “discussions” that Deputy Minister Thomas Lukaszuk said would never happen. AUPE announced five minutes ago that it had
Continue readingAlberta Diary: Craziness in Alberta jails continues – and may get worse today
The scene on the darkened lane that runs past Edmonton’s giant new Remand Centre has resembled the set for an apocalyptic movie the past couple of nights, with striking jail guards’ huge-wheeled four-by-fours crowding the ditches, AUPE banners flapping in the dark and strikers gathered around burn barrels. With Deputy
Continue readingAlberta Diary: Deputy Premier Tom Lukaszuk: exactly the wrong man to solve Alberta’s jail crisis
Wildcatting Correctional Officers on the picket line at the Edmonton Remand Centre just before midnight last night, long after the government’s ultimatum ordering them back to work. Below: Trade unionists occupy an Alberta Labour Relations Board boardroom yesterday afternoon in support of the striking guards. Below that: Deputy Premier Thomas
Continue readingAlberta Diary: Count on it: Alberta’s doctors got more than the government’s press release indicates
Dr. Michael Giuffre jots down the Alberta Medical Association’s wish list before yesterday’s agreement with the provincial government. Actual AMA negotiators may not appear exactly as illustrated. Below: Alberta Health Minister Fred Horne, Advanced Education Minister Thomas Lukaszuk. It will take a while to sort out what really happened in
Continue readingAlberta Diary: Are Alberta’s cannily incompetent Conservatives quietly awaiting a ‘Bitumen Gusher’?
Everybody should be as happy about Alberta’s “Bitumen Gusher” as these two guys, your blogger and former Finance Minister Ron Liepert. Below: AUPE’s chart of the price differential between Alberta bitumen and West Texas Intermediate crude. Below that: The Alberta government’s chart showing its natural resource revenue projections to 2022,
Continue readingAlberta Diary: Renting seniors’ beds is a formula for failure – and it’s time for Alberta to stop doing it
Fresh air and yogurt might have helped these guys live to be 160, but if they’d lived in Alberta, instead of Russia, where could they afford to sleep? Below, seniors care in Calgary, back in the day, before oldsters all carried tennis racquets, rode bicycles and looked like fashion models,
Continue readingSusan on the Soapbox: And Now…A Message from your Premier-In-Waiting: Mr Lukaszuk
We interrupt our regular programming—the PC spin on the cause of the $4 billion budget shortfall—to bring you an important public service announcement from the Premier-In-Waiting, Mr Lukaszuk. Mr Lukaszuk steps up to the microphone and says: Listen up you pesky union types, and this includes all you doctors who
Continue readingAlberta Diary: Uh-oh! Premier Alison Redford wants to have a ‘conversation’ with us
Fireside chats? Alberta Premier Alison Redford as she’ll likely see herself while softening up the province’s citizens for the March 7 Budget Speech on CTV tonight. Below: Ms. Redford as Albertans may see her. Below that: the real Ms. Redford; Conference Board Chief Economist Glen Hodgson. Oh dear. Premier Alison
Continue readingAlberta Diary: Alberta Premier Alison Redford gets warm reception in union lions’ den
Alison Redford speaks to the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees’ convention in Edmonton yesterday. (AUPE photo.) Below: Ms. Redford with AUPE President Guy Smith. Is she trying to build an alliance with public service unions? It’s tempting to say Alberta Premier Alison Redford walked boldly into the lions’ den yesterday
Continue readingAlberta Diary: Anti-union Wildrose Party’s fund-raising pitch piggybacks on union’s heavy lifting
Closed? Open? With Alberta Diary you can have it all. This blog is closed for a few days while your blogger takes a short break from writing stuff all the time. This means there can likely be no post on the Conservative Party’s Calgary Centre by-election nomination on Friday, Aug.
Continue readingAlberta Diary: The Annals of Alberta Labour Relations: Redford Government goes boldly where no Tory’s gone before
Some of the AUPE members who work at the Revera Riverbend facility in Edmonton, which ended yesterday when the Alberta government imposed a first-contract binding arbitration process and ordered an end to the strike. (AUPE Photo.) Below: Former AUPE President Dan MacLennan hams it up with former premier Ralph Klein.
Continue readingAlberta Diary: Some Alberta seniors will soon be eating better meals – they can thank the union for them
AUPE’s powerful viral video on the unappetizing 21-day menu. Below: Former Alberta Health Services CEO Stephen Duckett, Alberta Health Minister Fred Horne. One of the least successful experiments of the short, unhappy reign of Stephen Duckett as CEO of Alberta Health Services was the so-called 21-day menu, the unpalatable tinfoil-
Continue readingAlberta Diary: Message to Alberta’s doctors: Newton’s Third Law applies to politics too
A couple of Alberta doctors contemplate the state of the Alberta Medical Association’s latest negotiations with the province. Actual Alberta physicians may not be exactly as illustrated. Below: AMA President Linda Slocombe, Sir Isaac Newton, Alberta Health Minister Fred Horne. Just wondering, but is Newton’s Third Law no longer part
Continue readingAlberta Diary: Can one old man with a typewriter really have Fox News North on the ropes?
The Source, With David Climenhaga: Here I am on the set of my new Fox News North TV show with two polite young people from the Progressive Conservative and Wildrose parties to whom I’m about to be rude. Below: Sun News Network commentator Ezra Levant; Senator Patrick Brazeau. Sun News
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