EDMONTON, Alberta, Feb. 19 (UPI) -- The Alberta provincial government backed off from plans to order some 20,000 striking school teachers back to work Tuesday, as a huge crowd of demonstrators rallied at the Legislature building to chant slogans and wave placards.
The standoff came after some 6,000 public school teachers in Calgary walked off the job to join the ranks of more than 14,000 who have been on strike since Feb. 4, making it the biggest teachers' strike in Alberta's history. The latest walkout kept another 100,000 students from their classes, bringing the total to 350,000.
The striking teachers are demanding more pay, smaller classes and contract language that would boost the recruitment of teachers, and require school boards to retain them for longer terms.
Under an agreement reached last year, the teachers were awarded a 6-percent wage increase over two years. The teachers are demanding nearly twice that amount. Alberta Premier Ralph Klein said the province simply does not have the money to meet the teachers' demands.
Klein was in Germany as part of a trade mission led by Prime Minister Jean Chretien and decided not to return to Alberta to handle the crisis. Instead, his Cabinet met in his absence in Edmonton on Tuesday to consider proposals by Learning Minister Lyle Oberg and Human Resources Minister Clint Dunford to declare a public emergency and order the teachers back to work.
A crowd of some 3,000 striking teachers assembled outside the Legislature building, where the Cabinet meeting was held. Waving placards, they marched around the building, chanting "Get the message," and "Ralph go home."
Meanwhile, Alberta Teachers Association president Larry Booi said the union would challenge any back-to-work order in court. Lawyers for the association had prepared an affidavit to be filed in court immediately after an order was issued, he said. The order would have required teachers to be back on their jobs as early as Wednesday.
"I don't think they have the evidence to show an emergency exists," Booi said. The teachers, meanwhile, were preparing to return to work in case they needed to wait for a court decision, so as not to send a message to students that it was all right to break the law.
Following the Cabinet meeting, the government said it had decided not to issue a back-to-work order. Instead, it would encourage the teachers and school boards to return to the bargaining table.
Laurie Collins, a spokeswoman for Dunford, said before the Cabinet meeting that under the labor relations code, the government could declare an emergency, "if there is an unreasonable hardship being caused to persons who aren't party to the dispute."
The provincial labor minister said after the Cabinet meeting that there was not enough evidence to show that the strike was causing "unreasonable hardship" to either students or teachers.
The Alberta teachers' walkout began days after a provincewide teachers' strike in British Columbia last month kept some 600,000 students from their classrooms for one day.
