Date: 2003
Location: Edmonton
Profile: Margaret Ethier participated in all four Alberta nursing strikes between 1977 and 1988, serving as president of the union during the latter two. Hailing from the Annapolis Valley, Ethier began training as a nurse in the Nova Scotia Hospital, a psychiatric facility, in 1960. She subsequently nursed in Manitoba and Ontario, eventually moving to Edmonton with her husband. Like many nurses, Ethier regarded the Alberta Association of Registered Nurses, which also licensed nurses, as a poor bargaining agent. Nurses did not even get a vote on the contract that the AARN negotiated for them. So Ethier applauded the formation of the United Nurses of Alberta in 1977 and joined their limited strike that year. During the province-wide strike in 1980, she was elected North Central District representative. Her feistiness and insistence on grassroots union democracy won her the presidency that year. She remained president till 1988. Both in 1982 and 1988 she insisted on nurses’ rights as workers to defy government efforts to end strikes for better wages and more nurse-friendly shift scheduling. In her view, such strikes were fought on behalf of patients because poor working conditions and wages made it impossible to recruit a sufficient nursing workforce.
Keywords: Alberta Association of Registered Nurses; Nurse shortages; President, UNA; Psychiatric nursing; Right to strike; Shift scheduling; Strikes, UNA; Union democracy, UNA.
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See also: United Nurses of Alberta; Women and Work in Alberta