Historical Events

This marked the beginning of a ten-day wildcat strike by Alberta health care workers when 120 laundry workers members walked off the job after the Calgary Regional Health Authority declared they were contracting out their jobs to a private company. The walk-out sparked sympathy strikes by other hospital workers effectively shutting down the city's hospital services. Striking workers defied two Labour Relation Board rulings to return to work. The Regional Health Authority applied for a court injunction, but didn't act on it after Premier Ralph Klein told them to back off. After a 19 hour marathon negotiating session to avert a province-wide general strike, an agreement was reached on November 23 which provided an eight-month moratorium on contracting out and a commitment from the Premier of no further budget cuts in health care for at least a year. Although Alberta legislation has denied the right to strike for health care workers since 1983, the province has one of the highest rates of strike activity in the health care sector.

It was this day that Quebec Premier Jean Lesage in his opening statement at the Federal-Provincial Conference in Ottawa made this famous quote "The Queen does not negotiate with her subjects", referring to his opposition to granting collective bargaining rights to public employees. It didn't take long for him to change his mind. A little more than a year later in an attempt to make peace with an increasing militant Quebec labour movement, his government introduced legislation which provided collective bargaining rights to all public sector workers in the province. Prior to that the only province to grant collective bargaining rights public employees was Saskatchewan 1944.