Delaying, Disarming, and Deceiving the Union: The Lougheed Government, Alberta Government Employees, and the Public Service Employee Relations Act, 1977

Increasing discontent among provincial employees in Alberta in the late 1960s and 1970s led to growing militancy culminating in a series of strike actions in 1974 by members of the Civil Service Association of Alberta (csa of a) and the transformation of that organization into the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees. In response to growing labour unrest in the public sector, the Lougheed government created a joint government/union task force with the csa of a on 11 February 1975 to review the legislation governing provincial employees and to recommend changes in legislation necessary to achieve a better system of labour relations. The creation of the task force created a period of labour peace in the provincial public sector leading up to the provincial election in the spring of 1975. However, following the re-election of the Lougheed government, public sector labour legislation was revised with the passage of the highly anti-union Public Service Employee Relations Act in May 1977. Internal government documents of the day suggest the task force process was a cynical manipulation of the union in an effort to defuse public employee militancy and to delay conflict.