Nurses Strike in Alberta

In response to the threat of privatizing 11,000 hospital jobs in Alberta, Canada, several thousand workers went on spontaneous strike on October 26, affecting 45 facilities in the province. The workers are members of the Alberta Union of Public Employees (AUPE): nurses, laboratory technicians, cleaners, cafeteria workers, and orderlies.

The United Nurses of Alberta (UNA) were in solidarity with the strike: « We encourage our members to join the picket lines of their striking colleagues and not to replace the workers of the AUPE on strike », said the president of UNA.

The workers’ demands include staff increases, the revocation of public-sector health privatization plans, and no retaliation against strikers. In response to the strike, the government of Alberta, currently controlled by the United Conservative Party, has called for the dismissal of assistants and nurses and the reduction of doctors’ salaries.

On the evening of the strike, the Alberta Labor Relations Council ordered the « wild » strike to be stopped. AUPE executives said they would notify their members of the obligation to obey the directive.

The hospital strikes in Alberta are part of a fighting tradition in western Canada that goes back to the One Big Union, miners, and lumberjacks.

A joint organization of public-sector workers should be formed in Alberta. Teachers are now facing similar privatization threats. Postal and construction workers’ unions also recently conducted unannounced strikes.

Postal workers have organized themselves through networks of militants, both inside and outside the established union. Similar efforts by union militants to form worker coordinations would provide the basis for broader strikes.

The lesson of the wildcat postal strikes of 2016, which blocked Canadian post offices across the country – with solidarity pickets to circumvent laws that restrict striking – could be the basis for the growth of a united front from below to defend the interests of the working class.