The history of the United Nurses of Alberta (UNA) is one of transformation of highly trained but poorly paid and badly treated mainly women professionals into militant unionists fighting for higher wages, better working conditions, and input into issues of patient safety that reflected their training and experience.
Before UNA formed in 1977, Alberta nurses earned far less than unionized grocery employees and many other workers whose jobs did not require post-secondary education. Treated as imaginary Florence Nightingales without lives of their own sacrificing themselves to help patients, nurses were scheduled with short notices that made planning anything in their lives impossible. They received no overtime pay or statutory holiday pay, maternity leave, or pensions after marriage. A nurse was expected to be subservient to physicians at all time and to be silent about concerns about patient safety issues. Staff nurse associations began forming in 1964 but came under the control of the Alberta Association of Registered Nurses, the body that regulated membership in the profession and was dominated by nurse managers.
UNA was formed in June, 1977, by a small group of urban staff associations determined to break with the pliant AARN to form an independent union organization. One month later 2349 nurses in seven urban hospitals launched the first nursing strike ever in Alberta. They were ordered back to work. By 1980, with their ranks having tripled and alliances made with other unions, a UNA strike garnered significant public support. Though they were ordered back to work, the UNA nurses were able to use public support to extract a 29.8 percent wage increase over two years (more like 10 percent when inflation is factored in), better work schedules, and a professional responsibility clause that empowered nurses to demand better standards of care and increased staffing on hospital wards. In interviews with ALHI, nurses emphasize the importance of the latter in recognizing the education and experience of nurses and their role as primary contacts with patients. At the same time, many deplore the systemic barriers to implementing the staffing and health practices that nurses collectively regard as crucial for better outcomes for patients.
UNA faced stonewalling managers in 1982, during a time when inflation remained high, and an attempt by the provincial government to prevent a walkout by establishing a Disputes Inquiry Board. UNA held its own vote and 6000 nurses from 69 hospitals walked the pavement, again benefitting from cross-union and public support to win a 29 per cent wage increase and other improvements. An angry Progressive Conservative government passed legislation that forbade strikes by healthcare workers.
UNA negotiations with hospitals in 1987 proved rocky because the employers, directed by the government, demanded wage and benefit rollbacks, refusing to discuss nurses’ demands for improvements in safety, patient care, and professional responsibility. UNA made plans for a strike vote, only to be met with a cease-and-desist order from the Alberta Labour Relations Board. UNA defied that order and held its own vote on January 22, 1988, which provided an overwhelming mandate for a strike to get a better offer. Margaret Ethier, UNA president from 1980 to 1989, says in her ALHI interview that the government’s gall in suggesting that nurses did not even have a right to decide whether they should strike, produced a greater determination to strike than might otherwise have been the case during a severe recession. Nurses wanted to make it clear to the government that they would not be deprived of the fundamental right to decide themselves whether or not to withhold their labour. The strike lasted 19 days. The government attempted to not only end the strike but to destroy UNA by imposing stiff penalties that would have bankrupted the union. Union solidarity saved the day. The Alberta Federation of Labour collected over $425,000 in contributions to help UNA pay its fines.
While UNA members received few immediate benefits from their act of defiance in 1988, the willingness of nurses to walk out to achieve improvements was on the minds of the government when it negotiated with the nurses again in 1990. The union won many of the improvements that the negotiators in 1987 had refused to even discuss. That victory was put to the test during the extensive cuts to healthcare made by Ralph Klein in 1993 and 1994. But fear of nurses’ strikes later led to Klein making wage and other concessions to the nurses. Still, the impact of the Klein cuts was to increase overwork on the part of nurses, a problem that has continued to the present day, particularly after the coming to power of the United Conservative Party in 2019. The UCP, focused on privatization of healthcare and reduction of corporate taxes, wanted to cut 700 nursing positions in the province despite population growth and nursing shortages that dictated a very different approach. That goal was temporarily put on hold in 2020 because of the COVID pandemic which drastically increased challenges for the healthcare system. Nurses, already facing overwork and threats from a minority of violence-prone patients, found their workloads and working conditions becoming worse than ever. Many chose to retire, to change occupations, or to leave the province because appeals from UNA and other healthcare unions to the government for more compassionate treatment of healthcare staff resulted in few changes for the better.
Under the leadership of Heather Smith since 1989, UNA has consolidated its representation of nurses in Alberta and made UNA an important force in the overall trade union movement of the province. The remaining locals of the Staff Nurses’ Association had followed UNA’s example and moved away from control by the AARN. UNA cooperated with the Staff Nurses’Association in negotiations and in 1997 the Staff Nurses’ Association locals agreed to become locals within UNA. In 2001, a majority of UNA members and a majority of locals agreed to a resolution that would make UNA part of the House of Labour by joining the Alberta Federation of Labour and seven elected local labour councils. UNA now participates in labour solidarity actions across the labour movement, and is active in the work of the Parkland Institute, Public Interest Alberta, and Friends of Medicare. In all its work, it promotes the goals of expanding publicly operated and publicly administered healthcare accessible to all Canadians regardless of background or income. That has included campaigns for pharmacare and dental care to become part of medicare and for long-term care and homecare to be compassionate, affordable for all, and provided by non-profit public operators.
Visit the United Nurses of Alberta Website at https://www.una.ab.ca
For a complete history of the Union go to https://www.una.ab.ca/files/uploads/2017/11/history2017.pdf
In the voices of participants, this video documents the history of the United Nurses of Alberta from its founding in 1977 to the turn of the 21st century.
This video documents Red Deer nurse Susan Parcels’ successful legal action, supported by the United Nurses of Alberta, to require that benefits provided for sick leave apply as well to maternity leave.