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EDMONTON — Raising taxes will reduce provincial budget cuts and save more than 1,000 teachers from losing their jobs in Alberta, say unions, community groups and social-services agencies, which have banded together to push for more funding.

Collecting more revenue will help the government provide more stable and long-term funding to programs and services that Albertans need and rely on, said Gil McGowan, president of the Alberta Federation of Labour.

To that end, McGowan's group and dozens of other organizations have launched a campaign called Join Together Alberta to press the government for more funding for education, social services and health care.

"Why should we be skimping on the services and programs that we need to build a stronger foundation for the future of our province and its citizens? The truth is: there is no good reason," McGowan said. "We need to talk about higher royalty rates for the development and sell of our collectively owned natural resources."

Alberta also needs to talk about reducing corporate tax breaks and increasing taxes for higher-income earners, he said.

Join Together Alberta's initiative comes on the heals of an announcement from Edmonton's public school board that provincial budget cuts will cost nearly 350 jobs, including more than 200 teaching positions. The Calgary board is expected to trim 358 teachers and support staff. The government committed this week to spend $550 million on new schools.

How the government fixes the problem is its decision, said Sharon Armstrong, vice-president of the Alberta Teachers' Association.

"The children that are in our schools right now are entitled to a proper education in a province that is this wealthy," she said. "They need to put $100 million back into the education system now for this fall."

Armstrong said if the cuts are made, it will lead to larger class sizes, less teacher attention per student and more difficulty improving graduation rates.

Diana Gibson, research director for the Parkland Institute, said the provincial government should stop tying social services to oil and gas prices. That system isn't working and hasn't been for a long time, she said.

"Our social spending goes up and down. It's very volatile because oil and gas is volatile. To have some form of stability in our education, health care and social programs, we need to rely on stable, predictable revenues."

Politicians have long boasted that Alberta has the lowest taxes in Canada, Gibson said, but Alberta should be beating other provinces by a yard, not a mile. The province can raise taxes to provide adequate funding for services and still have the lowest tax rates, she said.

The rest of the provinces are collecting between $11 billion to $20 billion more in taxes than Alberta.

"That gap is so big," she said. "Why the difference? We could capture $10.9 billion and still be the lowest tax jurisdiction in Canada and one of the lowest in the G7."

McGowan agreed, adding the change won't affect industry.

"People in businesses don't come to Alberta because of the low tax rates. They come to Alberta because of the oil and gas."

So why is Alberta laying off education workers; under-funding universities, colleges and technical schools; and skimping on other services,s he asked.

"The answer is clear: the reason our cupboard is bare is because provincial government has decided to make it bare."

Edmonton Journal, Thurs May 26 2011
Byline: Miranda Scotland

Speaking Notes

Gil McGowan, President

Our current provincial government wants Albertans to believe that these are tough times.

They want us to believe that the recession has left them with no choice but to trim budgets and cut funding ... even for vital services like education.

People like Premier Stelmach and Education Minister Dave Hancock put on their most sorrowful faces and said things like:

"We're sorry, but – really – there is no alternative."

But ordinary Albertans know in their hearts and their guts that there is something seriously wrong with this picture.

They see mega projects ramping up; they see glitzy office towers rising; they see the economy springing back to life.

And they wonder: Why?

Why, amidst such plenty, should we be laying off teachers and other education workers?

Why should we be under-funding our universities, colleges and technical schools?

Why should we be cutting services for the needy and the disabled?

Why should we be skimping on the services and programs that we need to build a stronger foundation for the future of our province and its citizens?

The truth is: There is no good reason.

The truth is: It is ordinary Albertans, with hearts and their guts, who are right, and it's our politicians, with their pious pronouncements, who are wrong.

Facts are sometimes inconvenient for politicians. They get in the way of the stories they tell voters and tell themselves.

But when we're talking about our schools and our hospitals ... about services for our kids, our grandparents and the most vulnerable members of our society ... then we can't afford to ignore the facts.

And what do the facts tell us?

Well, they tell us that Alberta is one of the most prosperous jurisdictions not only in Canada, but in the entire world.

They tell us that we still have no public debt ...

...that, on a person basis, our provincial economy is 75 percent larger than the Canadian average...

...that corporate profits in the province have increased by more than 400 percent over the past decade...

...that ten of billions of dollars in investment continue to pour into the oil sands each year.

These are NOT tough times.

We are a province that can think big and dream big. And we are certainly a province that can afford to provide adequate, stable long-term funding for core services like education.

There is another part of the government story that doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

That's the part where they tell Albertans that we has a spending problem – that costs are out of control for public services.

But, once again, the facts tell a different story.

They tell us that, despite our wealth, Alberta's per person spending on public services is bang on the national average.

They tell us that overall spending on public services has barely kept up with our province's robust population growth.

And they tell us that, as a share of our provinces overall economic pie, spending on public services has actually gone down over the last 20 years – and not by just a little bit.

All of this begs the question: if we can afford our services (which, clearly, we can) and if spending is under control (which, clearly, it is) why, then, is the Stelmach government still recording deficits?

This is the real question that Albertans need to be asking themselves and their politicians: now; during the Tory leadership race and in the next election.

And the answer is clear: the reason our cupboard is bare is because our provincial government has decided to make it bare.

Successive governments here in Alberta have deliberately stopped collecting a reasonable and responsible share of our province's economic pie to fund the public services that Albertans need. Years and years of ill-conceived tax and royalty cuts have left us with an inadequate and unreliable revenue base.

Alberta is like a rich guy with a big hole in his pocket. He keeps shoving the money in, but his pockets are always empty at the end of the month. The answer is not for the rich guy to sell his house, or tell his kids they're going to live on Kraft dinner. The answer is to fix the hole.

That's why we've re-established the Join Together Alberta coalition ... and it's why we'll be circulating our declaration and hosting townhalls across the province.

We want to help Albertans understand that lay-offs and larger class sizes are not inevitable or unavoidable.

We want to remind our leaders and the public about the important role that public services play in building a more sustainable, equitable and prosperous future.

We want to demonstrate that what we have is a revenue problem, not a spending problem.

We want to pressure our politicians to stop preaching austerity when it is clearly unwarranted.

And we to call on the government to deal with the real problem: which is Alberta's broken system for revenue generation.

The good news is that thoughtful members of our provincial community are starting to wake up and speak out. Peter Lougheed, members of the premier's advisory panel on economic strategy, think tanks like the Parkland Institute and the Canada West Foundation: they're all calling for a discussion on revenue reform.

Politicians don't like to talk about taxes. But for the sake of our kids, our families and our future, this is a discussion we have to have. We're going to do our part to make sure that happens.

River Valley Room, Chateau Lacombe
Edmonton
March 26, 2011

The Alberta Federation of Labour thinks the province's minimum wage is too low, and it wants Alberta Employment and Immigration Minister Thomas Lukaszuk to do something about that before he steps down to seek the Conservative party leadership.

"Lukaszuk's first act when he became minister a year and a half ago was to freeze Alberta's minimum wage," AFL president Gil McGowan said in a news release last week. "At the time, he said he would review the practice of automatically indexing the minimum wage and only consider an increase when the provincial economy returned to health. Well, the review is done and the recession is over. It's time for the minister to live up to the promise he made to Alberta's poorest workers."

Alberta's minimum wage sits at $8.80 per hour, lower than all other Canadian provinces and territories with the exception of British Columbia's $8.75. But with B.C. planning to increase its rate to $9.50 in November, then to $10.25 per hour in May 2012, that will leave Alberta trailing the field unless the minimum wage is raised in this province.

In other provinces, the minimum wage ranges from $9 in Prince Edward Island and the Yukon to $11 in Nunavut and $10.25 in Ontario. Elsewhere on the Prairies, the minimum wage is $9.25 in Saskatchewan and $9.50 in Manitoba.

At $8.80 per hour, full-time hourly minimum-wage workers in Alberta earn $352 a week and approximately $18,304 per year, based on eight-hour days and a 260-day work year, according to the Canadian Minimum Wage website. That would put a single person earning minimum wage in Lethbridge barely above the "low-income cut-off" line of $18,147 per year, as calculated by the Canadian Council on Social Development (2006 figures).

McGowan says with an improved economy and with thousands of high school students set to join the job market for the summer, now is a good time to bump up Alberta's minimum wage.

But there are two sides to that coin. Critics of a higher minimum wage say it leads to job losses. When B.C. announced its plans to hike its minimum wage, a report from the Fraser Institute predicted the increase will result in between 9,000 and 52,000 job cuts.

A report released this year by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business titled "Minimum Wage: Reframing the Debate" noted, "Although governments have implemented minimum wage policies in hopes of reducing poverty and improving the well-being of low-income workers, the overall effectiveness of these policies is debatable."

The report went on to estimate that a 10 per cent increase in the minimum wage across all provinces "costs between 92,300 and 321,300 jobs."

That means while an increase in the minimum wage means more money in the pockets of those at the low end of the wage scale, it also means a number of workers wind up with their income reduced to zero.

Clearly, the issue creates a dilemma. On the surface, it seems a no-brainer that workers deserve a better minimum wage. But it's also true that many small businesses aren't in a position to boost their payroll budget. If payroll goes up, so do other associated costs such as payroll taxes including Canada Pension Plan, Employment Insurance and Workers' Compensation contributions, the CFIB notes in its report.

Consequently, if the minimum wage goes up, something has to give - and that often means people losing their jobs.

So the question boils down to: Is it worth it to raise the minimum wage and improve the lot of some workers while making things worse for others?

There's no easy answer.

Lethbridge Herald Opinion, Thurs May 26 2011

Teachers and the Alberta Federation of Labour plan to fight layoffs that could cost up to 1,200 teachers their jobs. The Alberta Teachers' Association is holding a news conference this morning within the A-F-L to speak out about budget shortfalls that are behind the expected cuts. Union leaders blame the problem on government boom-and-bust budget cycles. They say the province should come up with a plan that would provide the education system with stable funding.

AM770 News, Thurs May 26 2011

EDMONTON – A coalition of hundreds of thousands of Albertans is gathering to force the Conservative government to fix its broken revenue system and save our schools, post-secondary education, health care and other vital social services.

Today (Thursday, May 26), a new campaign was launched under the familiar tartan banner of Join Together Alberta (JTA) to demand that the province reform its revenue model so that the vital public services that Albertans demand and deserve can be protected.

"Alberta is one of the wealthiest places in the world, blessed with an abundance of extremely valuable natural resources – and yet our government has manufactured a financial crisis that is likely to see 1,200 teachers laid off in the next few months and a still to be determined number of vital educational support staff," says Gil McGowan, president of the Alberta Federation of Labour (AFL), which represents 140,000 workers and co-chair of the JTA campaign. "Our education system is experiencing the same kind of chaos that has been inflicted on our health-care system, and that pain is also being felt in post-secondary education and in social services struggling to help vulnerable Albertans."

Bill Moore-Kilgannon, executive director of Public Interest Alberta and campaign co-chair, says: "This campaign is going to mobilize people from various public service sectors and citizens across Alberta who care deeply about the fabric of our communities. Albertans know that our public services and communities are worth fighting for, and this campaign is going to help make that loud and clear to all political parties."

Join Together Alberta is an alliance of community groups, social-services agencies and unions and was formed in 2009. The coalition already represents hundreds of thousands of Albertans, but this new campaign will reach out to many more. Coming events include:

• Phoning 250,000 Alberta homes in the coming days, asking citizens to join the new JTA campaign;
• A telephone town-hall meeting at 7 p.m. on May 31 that will allow people from all over the province to join an interactive show, much like a radio call-in show, to talk about solutions to Alberta's revenue problems;
• A town-hall tour that will visit seven cities including Red Deer, Medicine Hat, Grand Prairie, Calgary, Lethbridge, Fort McMurray and Edmonton (click here for tour details); and
• The signing of the Our Alberta Declaration, which calls on the Conservative government to finally realize the province's real potential, reform its broken revenue system and fund vital public services.

CONTACTS: Gil McGowan, president, Alberta Federation of Labour, 780-218-9888

Bill Moore-Kilgannon, executive director, Public Interest Alberta, 780-993-3736

QUOTES from JTA coalition members

A coalition of public sector workers is ramping up its call for no more government cuts.

The Join Together Alberta group launched a new campaign Thursday, essentially creating a coalition including the Alberta Federation of Labour (AFL) and the Alberta Teachers Association (ATA).

The coalition has issued a declaration, asking the provincial government to stop "contemplating cuts, freezes and rollbacks in any vital public services at a time of obvious prosperity."

"We want to really help the public understand how important our public services are in Alberta," says Sharon Armstrong, vice-president of the ATA.

It came to light Tuesday that upwards of 1,000 teaching positions may be cut come September, according to a draft budget. Armstrong says the Alberta education system is expecting more than 6,000 new students in September, and 100,000 more by 2020.

Armstrong says the governments recent announcement of more than $550 million for 22 new schools in the province is "short sighted."

"Why you would put money into building schools when you choose not to finance the schools (and) programs that you have right now is certainly questionable," says Armstrong.

The Join Together Alberta group will be launching a series of town halls across the province, starting in Red Deer on June 6. The coalition also plans a telephone town hall on May 31, and a mass telephone campaign reaching more than 250,000 homes in Alberta.

The group welcomes anyone who is willing to sign the declaration. For more information visit www.JoinTogetherAlberta.ca.

Edmonton Sun, Thurs May 26 2011
Byline: Tanara McLean

A Dane County judge struck down Gov. Scott Walker's controversial collective bargaining law on Thursday, ruling that a legislative committee law violated the state's open meetings law when it hastily convened to amend the measure.

The ruling by Dane County Circuit Judge Maryann Sumi won't end the legal fight over the law, which sharply curtails the collective bargaining rights of most public employees in Wisconsin.

An appeal of Sumi's decision is all but certain. And the state Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments on June 6 over whether to take the case immediately in response to an earlier request by the state Department of Justice and state Department of Administration challenging Sumi's authority to act in the case.

The high court also has yet to rule on an appeal by DOJ lawyers that was filed after Sumi issued a restraining order in March barring implementation of the law.

In concluding her 30-page decision, Sumi pointed out that she isn't ruling on the legality of the law itself.

"It is not the court's business to determine whether 2011 Wisconsin Act 10 is good public policy or bad public policy," Sumi wrote. "It is this court's responsibility, however, to apply the rule of law to the facts before it."

Walker had no comment on the ruling. DOA Secretary Mike Huebsch said the case would be pursued before the Supreme Court.

State Rep. Peter Barca, D-Kenosha, who was the lone Democrat at the March 9 legislative conference committee meeting, applauded the ruling.

"This ruling sets an important precedent that when the Legislature meets, the people must have a seat at the table," Barca said. "This is a huge victory for Wisconsin democracy."

During the meeting, Barca accused Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald of violating the open meetings law.

At the heart of Sumi's decision is whether the conference committee that met on March 9 to whittle fiscal elements from what was then Walker's budget repair bill had given proper public notice of its meeting under the state's open meetings law.

The law requires 24 hours' notice, or two hours' notice if "good cause" is shown. Sumi ruled that neither standard was met. Because of that, she wrote, the law is void.

"The court must consider the potential damage to public trust and confidence in government if the Legislature is not held to the same rules of transparency that it has created for other governmental bodies," Sumi wrote. "Our form of government depends on citizens' trust and confidence in the process by which our elected officials make laws, at all levels of government."

Fitzgerald said the state Supreme Court will have the ultimate say in the matter.

"There's still a much larger separation-of-powers issue: whether one Madison judge can stand in the way of the other two democratically elected branches of government," Fitzgerald said.

Fitzgerald's brother, Assembly Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald, maintained that the law was passed according to the rules of the Legislature.

But in her ruling, Sumi said Senate Chief Clerk Rob Marchant could cite no specific rule, other than "custom, usage and precedent," that allowed the conference committee meeting to take place without the required public notice. She wrote that allowing such unwritten exemptions to the law "would open the door to evasion" of the law's mandates.

Republicans have not said whether they would re-introduce the measure and did not address that on Thursday.

State Journal reporters Mary Spicuzza and Clay Barbour contributed to this report.

Wisconsin State Journal, Thurs May 26 2011

A plan to lay off more than 1,000 teachers across Alberta is being met with fierce opposition from unions and special interest groups, who say the decision can't be justified.

"Our provincial government wants Albertans to believe these are tough times," said Gil McGowan of the Alberta Federation of Labour. "We should not be as a province talking austerity, we should not be talking freezes. We are a province that can afford high quality public services."

Roughly 1,200 teaching jobs are expected to be eliminated this fall, the result of funding cuts to education programs that have left school boards unable to balance their books. On Tuesday Edmonton's Public School Board announced that 229 teachers would be lost.

But members of "Join Together Alberta" - comprised of a variety of unions and special interest groups - say that schools boards shouldn't be forced to consider job cuts when the province has money to spend.

"We think in the short term the provincial government should be drawing from the substantiality fund to make sure our public services are maintained," McGowan said.

Sharon Armstrong, vice-president of the Alberta Teacher's Association, believes a united voice could help convince the province to loosen it's purse-strings.

"The individual in Alberta has a lot of power if they choose to use it," Armstrong said. "I believe if they speak out strongly, the government will listen."

Vanessa Sauve, president of the Holyrood Parents Council, is lending her voice to the chorus, concerned about what cuts could mean for children.

"Parents are worried," Sauve said. "Larger class sizes for their child means less class time with the teacher and things can get missed."

Education Minister Dave Hancock could not be reached for comment Thursday, but earlier in the week suggested that the province has increased education spending by nearly 70 percent in the last decade.

Global Toronto, Thurs May 26 2011

EDMONTON – In the wake of reports warning that up to 1,200 Alberta teachers may be laid off in the next few months, a province-wide campaign is being launched to force the Conservative government to fix the real problems facing the province.

"We live in one of the wealthiest jurisdictions in the world and yet our education system is clearly in crisis," says Gil McGowan, president of the Alberta Federation of Labour, which represents 140,000 workers. "This situation is entirely unnecessary and has been created by Alberta's broken revenue system. We need to fix our revenue system to save our schools."

Sharon Armstrong, vice-president of the Alberta Teachers' Association (ATA), says: "In September, Alberta's school boards will be $100 million dollars short of the money they will need to maintain the quality of education that we enjoy today. Up to 1,200 teachers across the province will be looking for work this summer elsewhere, because their job in Alberta has disappeared. We appreciate the government's recent announcement of new schools, but the schools are useless unless we have the staff inside them to inspire our students."

The Join Together Alberta coalition - an alliance of community groups, social-services agencies and unions, including the AFL - has been reformed to put pressure on the government to fix the revenue problem so Albertans get the vital public services they demand and deserve.

"The real issue is that Alberta has been crippled by a decade of ill-conceived tax and royalty cuts. Alberta has an abundance of natural resources. There is no reason it can't afford stable funding," says McGowan.

The coalition will launch Phase 2 of its campaign in Edmonton tomorrow (Thursday) to demand the Alberta government fix its broken system for revenue generation. McGowan and  Armstrong will be joined by people representing various sectors and unions fighting cuts who will be available to speak to media.

TIME: 10:30 a.m., Thursday, May 26

LOCATION: River Valley Room, Crowne Plaza Chateau Lacombe, 10111 Bellamy Hill, Edmonton

CONTACTS: Gil McGowan, president, Alberta Federation of Labour, 780-218-9888

Two alarming reports recently out point to long-term trends in the U.S. economy that don't bode well for maintaining a strong middle class in this nation.

Between 1980 and 2009, labor productivity increased by 78 percent but:

•The median compensation of 35- to 44-year-old male high school graduates (with no college) declined by 10 percent.

•The median compensation of 35- to 44-year-old male college graduates (without graduate degrees) grew by 32 percent, less than one half as much as overall productivity growth.

•Only the median compensation of 35- to 44-year-old men with post-graduate training came close to labor productivity growth increasing by 49 percent.

The above data from the Employment Policy Research Network noted that such an out-of-sync productivity-wage ration resuled in 1 percent of the population living on 21 percent of the nation's total annual earnings in 2009.

Next, an analysis by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics found that the 10 largest occupations in May 2010 accounted for more than 20 percent of total employment. But here's the kicker: Nine out of 10 of these occupations are relatively low-paying jobs, meaning jobs that paid less than the U.S. mean hourly wage of $21.35.

The analysis by the New America Foundation also notes that the:

two largest occupations were retail salespersons and cashiers, employing 7.6 million people and making up almost 6 percent of total U.S. employment. Cashiers' mean hourly wages were $9.52, less than half of the U.S. mean hourly wage, while retail salespersons earned a mean hourly wage of $12.02.

Meanwhile, attacks by state legislators on public employees' right to collectively bargain for a middle-class life is decimating an avenue that enabled many workers to achieve the American Dream.

All the more reason for the timeliness of AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka's message on Friday calling for an independent voice for the labor movement. In a major speech at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., Trumka said the ongoing attacks on working people's rights, new efforts at curtailing voting rights and calls for austerity on the backs of seniors, children and the sick are not just mean-spirited politics. They are the battle lines of a moral challenge for the soul of America.

AFL-CIO Now Blog, Tues May 24 2011