In the final days of April’s federal election, representatives from several of Alberta’s largest unions rallied at the Alberta Legislature to urge their members to commit to a “Common Front”—and lend a hand to the struggling New Democrats.
The Alberta Federation of Labour (AFL), the primary organizers of the event, called it a “Resistance Rally.” That resistance was directed at more than one problem.
AFL president Gil McGowan addresses the Resistance Rally from the steps of the Alberta Legislature, April 26 2025
Speakers flagged stagnating wages, growing privatization, and increased discrimination against workers who have disabilities or belong to minority communities as their top targets.
The convention’s keynote speaker, Chris Smalls, a U.S. labour activist who successfully organized the Amazon warehouse he was fired from for protesting poor COVID-19 protections, spoke at the rally as well, warning attendees of the dangers of unchecked corporate power and the populist right.
“This is the most important election of your lifetime. You do not want what we have,” he said.”
Smalls stressed how much power and leverage Canadian labour still wields, and urged attendees to organize their workplaces to resist the predations and misadventures of oligarchs like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk.
“Solidarity is free. Showing up doesn't cost you a thing, maybe a little bit of Uber money. Talking to people, having conversations, giving out hugs, being there for one another—that's something that billionaires can never figure out,” he said.
“All they know is about money, profits, how many people they hire and fire, how many yachts they buy, how many penis rockets they need to go to space, but they can never figure out the power of people when we come together.”
In closing, Chris Smalls invited attendees to a May Day gathering and march at the Wilbur MacIntyre Park gazebo off Whyte Avenue in Edmonton at 5:30pm on May 1st.
Rather than fixate on the tariff war with the Americans, which dominated the discourse during the federal election, local labour leaders focused on issues of concern specifically to Alberta workers.
Tom Hesse, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) local 401, urged attendees to shop union by doing business with Safeway and Superstore—unionized shops here in Alberta—while avoiding Sobyes, Walmart, and Costco.
Hesse called upon the province to ease conditions for working people by enacting rent controls.
Guy Smith, president of the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees (AUPE), drew attention to ongoing collective bargaining and urged attendants to support picket lines that he expected to soon go up.
“This is where the Common Front will have to show its full force,” said Smith.
“We need to be brave, we need to be strong, and we need to be united in working class solidarity,” said Smith.
If government workers represented by AUPE do strike, Smith pointed out, it would be the first government strike in AUPE history.
But while he wasn’t front and centre, Trump was still present in nearly every speaker’s presentations.
The leading opposition to the Trump agenda in Parliament are the federal Liberals, who rode a wave of anti-Trump sentiment to a comfortable minority victory in Monday’s federal election.
But the rally’s organizers, including AFL president Gil McGowan, urged attendees to support the New Democrats, particularly the candidate for Edmonton-Griesbach, Blake Desjarlais, who spoke alongside Edmonton Centre NDP candidate Trisha Estabrooks.
Desjarlais came up short by several thousand votes in Monday’s election and the Edmonton-Griesbach seat has returned to Conservative control through returning MP Kerry Diotte. In Edmonton Centre, where McGowan ran as a federal NDP candidate in 2015, Estabrooks placed third, with Liberal Eleanor Olszewski winning.
Saturday’s rally, which coincided with the AFL’s convention in Edmonton that weekend, is a product of the AFL-led Common Front campaign. That campaign is working to build a coalition of unions who represent workers in Alberta, including groups which were formerly at odds with the AFL, like AUPE.
The campaign has provided an opportunity for AFL president McGowan to raise his profile in the weeks leading up to his re-election campaign.
On Sunday, McGowan faced a leadership challenge from Greg Mady, president of the Edmonton District Labour Council. McGowan secured his re-election by 94 votes. Another AFL leader behind the Common Front strategy, Cori Longo, was acclaimed for a full term as AFL secretary treasurer.
In what several observers confirmed was an AFL convention first, all attendees except for voting delegates were asked to leave the convention floor for the vote and a candidates’ forum beforehand.
A proposed resolution that would have made convention every three years, instead of two, received 62 per cent support, falling short of the two-thirds required for a constitutional amendment.
Delegates overwhelmingly voted in favour of a resolution in support of Canadian unity and against Alberta separatism.
The resolution’s passage, McGowan said in an April 26 news release, means that workers “won’t sit idly by while our premier further fans the flames of separatism.”
“The workers we represent believe that their interests are best served within a united Canada, not an independent Alberta, and will fight any attempts to weaken our province’s position within Confederation,” he said.