Do Christian Schools need labour unions?

On October 6, many Christian school teachers in Alberta could be on the picket lines instead of in the classroom. The last time Alberta Teachers’ Association members went on strike was in 2002, and since then, many Christian schools in the province have joined the public system. These schools receive full government funding, and teaching staff are hired by the district school board, not the Christian school society.

For the first time, many administrators in these alternative Christian school programs are working overtime to answer questions from staff and parents like “Will we get a tuition refund if teachers go on strike?” or “Who is going to look after my kids if class is cancelled and I have to be on the picket line?”

In all provinces, Christian schools tend to be tight-knit. Many teachers are also parents, parents are also board members and board members may be former staff. It’s not hard to imagine the damage a strike could do to those relationships.

Pacific Christian School

John Slofstra worked for 40 years at Pacific Christian School (PCS) in Victoria, B.C.; 20 as a teacher and 20 as an administrator, and now, in retirement, he is chair of the Employee Relations Committee. During his career, the B.C. Teachers’ Federation, which represents public school teachers in the province, went on strike dozens of times and was locked out three times. Slofstra recalls that he often felt grateful not to be caught up in the mess, especially during his years as vice-principal.

“The teachers, they’re my friends. And we go out together and we have fun together. How awful it would be if suddenly we were on opposite ends of a wage settlement issue where they felt they had no choice but to boycott the school,” says Slofstra. “I know it’s terrible for the public school people, too. They don’t like it either, but it is the system that they have.”

At Pacific Christian School, staff pay, benefits and grievances are handled by the Employee Relations Committee under the purview of the board (officially, the Victoria Christian Education Society), a structure that Slofstra says gives space for teachers to make their concerns heard via regular surveys and staff representatives. But the final say lies with the superintendent.
“We trust the superintendent to make good decisions about staffing,” explains Slofstra. “Let’s just say that somebody was not living up to their contractual obligations and then that person had to be fired, for example, or laid off. Then it will be the superintendent’s responsibility. If there was a sense from the employee that something unfair had happened, they could, of course, appeal to the board.”

Slofstra spoke highly of PCS boards that have functioned well over the years, maintained high levels of trust and good communication with staff and parents. They worked hard to keep tuition rates reasonable, buildings well-maintained and teacher salaries competitive.

But what about when those systems break down? Slofstra said he’s seen that happen too. What happens when teachers no longer trust their administrators, or parents are unhappy about hiring decisions?

Beacon Christian School

Back in 1994, a lack of trust and transparency was creating friction between staff and the board at Beacon Christian High School and Calvin Memorial Christian School in St. Catharines, Ontario. The staff at these two schools voted to unionize through the Christian Labour Association of Canada (CLAC). At the time, critics were concerned that a unionized staff would irreversibly damage the school’s culture – staff-board relations would become adversarial and teachers would say “no” to extra activities that fall outside of their contractual hours.

“Beacon is a 30-year experiment that points to the contrary,” explained Ralph Pot, current Executive Director of Beacon Christian School. “The union has provided a way for staff to have professional representation when dealing with employment matters. Inevitably, in a Christian school, boards change, principals change, and sometimes there’s a lack of institutional memory. Having a collective agreement that gets reviewed from time to time [provides] continuity that is bigger than one person or a couple of board members.” For most of Beacon’s current staff and administration, working in a unionized context is all they’ve ever known, and none of them were at the school when the union first formed.

Courtney Balt, a teacher at Beacon who also serves as a shop steward for the union, liaising between CLAC and the staff, says she is relieved to have the union’s support when colleagues ask her for help with difficult workplace issues.

“As a steward, it’s been really helpful to protect my relationship with my coworkers,” explains Balt, “because I want to support my co-worker, but I’m also working full-time.”

As a member of the Employee Board Relations Committee (EBRC), Balt meets with staff, board and union reps at least three times per year. They discuss support staff contracts, prep periods, tuition relief, personal days, report card writing days, retirement pension funds, substitute teacher wages, the organization of custodial staff and the requirements of the Christian School Teacher Certificate (CSTC), among other things. The EBRC uses surveys and informal conversations amongst staff to gather feedback before each meeting.

“It’s not bargaining. We don’t open up the collective agreement and change things. It’s more of a check-in,” says Balt. “By the time we get to the bargaining table [every three years], a lot of the hard conversations have already happened [. . .] we try to make it as collaborative as possible so that we keep those relationships.”

Balt says it’s comforting to know that CLAC is there to give teachers, who are not experts in labour law, solid advice. “We are a small community, and so having a union helps create that third party and helps with those conversations because the reality is we all respect each other, and a lot of us have grown up together,” said Balt.

Does a union make a difference?

Back at Pacific Christian School, Slofstra says their non-unionized staff has a similar system of meetings, surveys and feedback loops between teachers and board members. Slofstra says these conversations can go well even without a union representative present.

Pot, who worked in non-unionized schools before coming to Beacon, echoed the same sentiment.

When boards and staff communicate well, a union isn’t necessary. The systems can function quite similarly with or without a union. In fact, he suspects that many parents at Beacon don’t even know the school’s staff is unionized.

Christian Courier also spoke to Dennis Perrin, Provincial Director for CLAC in Edmonton, Alta. CLAC has recently helped teaching staff unionize at three institutions of higher education in Western Canada: Trinity Western University (2023), The King’s University (2024) and Ambrose University (2025). He said the main motivation for these movements to organize labour was not about wages but about “having a voice.”

“It wasn’t a matter of the faculty and staff wanting to engage in battle with the administration. Those individuals, those faculty and staff, they’re very bought into the mission and vision of each of those organizations. They didn’t want to do anything that would harm those institutions [. . .] They wanted the ability to speak into a number of decisions that the administration was making that would not only benefit them as a faculty, but would also benefit the institution.”

Perrin’s description matches the attitudes Pot, Balt and Slofstra described at their own schools. Whether at the post-secondary or grade school level, educators at Christian institutions have a vested interest in the health of their institution. In some cases, a unionized staff is part of the answer.

Time machine

The letters to the editor published in Christian Courier’s winter 1994-1995 issues document the tense debate around the unionizing of Christian school staff. Some spoke in favour, like Steve and Joanne Paas, who wrote, “for too long, teachers have been complacent when colleagues have not received just treatment from boards. We have too long cowered before the organizational structures of the OACS/OCSTA, who subtly impose the hierarchical terms of teacher servanthood and board authority to control teachers.” Others insisted labour unions made sense in other sectors, but didn’t mesh with Christian school culture. William van Oene wrote, “Parents have to make great financial sacrifices, and so do teachers . . . [teachers are] following a call of the Lord, but not necessarily gaining financial rewards.”
 
Ed Vanderkloet, former executive director of CLAC was also a frequent contributor to CC at the time. In his 1992 book In and around the Workplace he wrote: “Not all disagreement in the workplace (or in the church and family, for that matter) is a fruit of the adversary spirit. In an imperfect society much of it is unavoidable and some of it can even be beneficial, providing there is a forum to air honest differences of opinion, and a fair mechanism to resolve disputes.”