Ugly fight holds justice system hostage
Standoff between AUPE and province carries risk for many
The “reply-all” email function has caused a lot of trouble in this world — but rarely as big a ruckus as Alberta’s current “wildcat” public-sector strike.
On April 22, Todd Ross, a guard at the new $580-million Edmonton Remand Centre, and a longtime activist with the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees, sent a hotly worded email to remand centre management, copied to the province’s deputy solicitor general, Tim Grant.
The letter accused remand centre managers of cowering in their offices, planning their retirements, with their heads up their — well, posteriors — instead of dealing with concerns about safety at the new facility.
The letter was forwarded to one of Ross’s union colleagues. He apparently responded, by agreeing with Ross in impolitic language.
But instead of sending his private answer to Ross, it seems he sent his note to every person on Ross’s distribution list — including senior managers.
Last Friday, after both emailers were suspended, with pay, pending a disciplinary hearing, their remand colleagues walked out in protest. Despite an injunction compelling staff at the Edmonton Remand and the Fort Saskatchewan provincial jail to go back to work, the illegal strike quickly spread, until jail guards, provincial sheriffs, social workers, court clerks, and parole officers across the province were all involved.
The province was left scrambling to fill the safety gaps with RCMP and municipal police officers, and scrambling to find legal avenues to force employees back to work.
But the truth of what actually sparked this mess seems largely irrelevant, as Alison Redford’s year-old government faces its toughest political challenge yet.
Labour disputes with doctors and teachers have been heated enough. The budget fight with post-secondary institutions has featured lots of nasty rhetoric. But no other union has been as prepared as AUPE to take radical action. And no other union, not even the Alberta Medical Association, has been as well-equipped to pressure the province, to the point of holding our entire criminal justice system hostage.
What, exactly, is wrong with the new remand centre?
AUPE says it doesn’t want to speak publicly about structural flaws, for fear of giving inmates dangerous ideas.
But Dennis Malayko, the Occupational Health and Safety representative for AUPE says the new building is still settling. As a result, he claims, door locks are misaligned and malfunctioning and windows are popping out. Malayko says the internal radio systems are also malfunctioning.
“When they call a Code 44 — officer needs assistance — the page is not going throughout the building.”
Malayko estimates only 35 per cent of guards at the new facility have five years experience or more, with 65 per cent having worked in corrections for only a year or less. That, he suggests, is problematic, in a facility that uses a new open “pod” design.
“We don’t have enough experience on the floor. In an open-concept facility, you need to know how to read a range of behaviour on the floor.”
The Redford government, in the person of deputy premier and designated point-man Thomas Lukaszuk, insists the facility is perfectly safe, and has passed all occupational health and safety inspections. Seemingly keen to throw gasoline on the fire, Lukaszuk suggested the whole strike was about nothing more than personality conflicts at the remand centre. He then jauntily invited the press to return for daily briefings, as though anticipating a long siege.
But this conflict is about more than safety. AUPE, in the midst of contract negotiations with a government that claims to have no budget for pay increases, is demonstrating its power.
It’s a risky strategy. Right now, public opinion seems largely on the side of the union, in no small part because of widespread discontent with the Redford government’s handling of other issues.
But while no one wants remand guards to work in unsafe conditions, this illegal strike puts hundreds of others at risk: not just the inmates in provincial jails or the police officers who’ve been pulled in to replace the guards and sheriffs, but also people like women fleeing abusive relationships, who can’t get emergency protection orders because of courthouse work stoppages.
Meantime, the very people employed by Albertans to maintain the rule of law seem happy to flout it when it suits their agenda. That’s a troubling betrayal of public trust.
If there are significant safety issues at the Edmonton Remand, absolutely, let’s fix them, and quickly.
But neither the government nor AUPE should let political posturing or power struggles stand in the way of community safety, or of justice.