After holding over $400 million in worker wages hostage for nine months, on Feb. 10, Alberta’s ruling United Conservative Party (UCP) finally released the remainder of the Critical Worker Benefit. Now, if the UCP keeps its promise, over 380,000 deserving Albertans will receive a $1,200 cheque.
While it’s still unclear who is included in the provincial government’s intentionally divisive list of eligible recipients, which it developed unilaterally without union consultation, one thing is certain — Jason Kenney and his crew are excluding thousands of workers, including his own direct government employees.
That’s right, all those government workers who were forced to put themselves, their families and their communities at significant risk—all those front-liners who suffered serious mental strain and enormous emotional turmoil — get a great big “thanks for nothing” from their own boss.
Confusion reigns. But what we do know is that the benefit is part of a cost-share program the Trudeau government announced back in May, when Ottawa promised $4 billion in wage “top-ups” to workers across the country who have been on the front lines of the pandemic. Each province decides how it will distribute its allotted cash. To claim the funds, provincial governments simply follow the rule of thirds and contribute their fair share to the fund.
Because the federal government earmarked approximately $346 million for Alberta, the UCP owed hard-working Albertans $118 million in temporary wage boosts. But it seems Kenney doesn’t believe he owes anyone anything because he has been hoarding that cash like a dragon guarding someone else’s gold. To put this figure into perspective, $118 million is only $5 million more than what Kenney gave job-killing oil barons to cover their Alberta Energy Regulator levies for six months, or about one-50th of the $6-billion loan he then gave TC Energy for a new pipeline.
Unlike Kenney’s super-generous corporate welfare, the Critical Worker Benefit costs the premier nothing. But his negligent time-wasting in accessing it cost working people everything. You can’t travel back in time to pay the rent you missed in July, or buy the groceries you desperately needed when you were using your unpaid sick days to isolate for the third time.
Nevertheless, we risk paying even more for the government’s ignorance if we don’t look past Kenney’s short-term “top-up” flip-flop to see his larger failure, which we can actually organize to defeat by building a stronger public service and a mobilized workforce. And if we fight, what do we win? A better Alberta, one where the government truly serves the people.
Building bridges … or digging holes?
Regardless of the province you live in, or how your premier decided to distribute the Critical Worker Benefit, the fact remains that pandemic pay — hero pay, wage“top-up” or whatever you want to call it — is small. It doesn’t begin to cover the enormous risks and strain workers endure to keep Albertans getting the services they need during a global crisis, unlike anything any of us has ever lived through. You deserve better than an extremely late, small, one-time payoff.
The Critical Worker Benefit was only supposed to bridge the scariest part of this health crisis so we could all arrive on the other side. Here in Alberta, the premier wouldn’t even provide that. Instead, he’s using relief cheques to blindfold us and drive our services even deeper into the ground by:
- Intending to take more than $1 billion in compensation from public-sector workers
- Axing hundreds of jobs in direct government services and post-secondary schools
- Privatizing services that generate much-needed revenue and serve the most vulnerable
- Making the legal system more inaccessible for low-income Albertans
- Outsourcing 11,000 health-care jobs
- Prematurely introducing a new payroll system that cost thousands of Government of Alberta members their wages
- Laying off members at the revenue-generating Alberta Gaming, Liquor and Cannabis agency, which redistributes wealth in communities
- Allowing corporations to retain control over the continuing-care industry and drive down workers' wages, benefits and protections
All Alberta workers on the front lines of this health disaster deserve an actual wage bonus that supplements a truly fair salary. Instead, Kenney sent you a backdated cheque that can’t begin to cover the economic damage the UCP and other administrations created before the pandemic. Why do Kenney and his crew refuse to build a bridge for Albertans? If they expect working people to swim across this crisis, that’s what you’ve already been doing for months. But there’s a reason you don’t sink: You’re always holding each other up.
Of course, AUPE members would have welcomed a lifeline had the UCP thrown it, especially some of our part-time and casual members who won’t ever see the $1,200 benefit because of unfair restrictions Premier Kenney placed on it. The government’s failure to act on time — sitting on millions of dollars while everyday people waited in line at the food bank, in the queue for a delayed medical procedure and by the phone for their COVID test results — devastated Albertans. But even if the premier had distributed the Critical Worker Benefit fairly, after the pandemic, working people would still have to organize to fight.
In the long term, the only real protection we can really trust is our collective power. When we unite, we build what politicians and employers can’t build — or refuse to build — because it would threaten their grip on power and all the wealth our labour creates. When we work to create a fair and affordable Alberta, we fight for fair hourly wages, we protect secure pensions for the future, and we ultimately build a strong public service that can keep all Albertans afloat for years to come. And that’s what we’ll keep doing because when we fight, eventually we’ll win.
Guy Smith is the president of the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees, Western Canada's largest union.
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