Last week, the Alberta Union on Provincial Employees published an update regarding contract negotiations for workers employed by the Edmonton Catholic Separate School Division.
Overseeing nearly 100 school covering pre-Kindergarten to high school education, the school division is the fourth largest school division in Alberta and the second-largest Catholic school division west of metropolitan Toronto.
AUPE represents over 300 cafeteria workers, custodians, maintenance workers, drivers, storepersons, general labourers, and trade workers, including painters, mechanics, carpenters, electricians, locksmiths, welders, glass and floor installers, and electronics technicians.
The most recent collective agreement for these workers expired last August.
The two parties didn’t meet until October, however, to begin bargaining, and the bargaining committee for the workers didn’t start collecting worker feedback on bargaining priorities until September.
Both parties exchanged proposals at the October meetings; although, the school division withheld their monetary proposals until a later date, a common practice among public sector employers.
The workers’ bargaining team, which includes 3 workers and a AUPE negotiator, initially proposed a 26% wage increase over 3-years (13.5%, 6%, and 6%), as well as cost of living adjustments.
The next bargaining sessions didn’t occur for over 3 months, at the beginning of February 2025. Those sessions focused on non-monetary proposals, with future sessions scheduled for the following month; however, I was unable to find updates on those sessions.
According to the negotiations update I mentioned at the start of the article, the two parties met at the end of last month. By this time, the contract had expanded from 3 years to 4 years, and the workers’s bargaining team has reduced their total wage increase proposal to 24%.
| Original | New | |
|---|---|---|
| Year 1 | 13.0% | 10.0% |
| Year 2 | 6.5% | 6.0% |
| Year 3 | 6.5% | 4.0% |
| Year 4 | — | 4.0% |
Whether it’s 26% or 24%, this might seem like a lot for the workers to ask for, but there is some important context to keep in mind.
Let’s look at raises for these workers over the previous two contracts.
| 1 September 2016 | 0.00% |
| 1 September 2017 | 0.00% |
| 1 September 2018 | 0.00% |
| 1 January 2019 | 1.00% |
| 1 September 2019 | 1.00% |
| 1 September 2020 | 0.00% |
| 1 September 2021 | 0.00% |
| 1 September 2022 | 0.00% |
| 1 June 2023 | 1.25% |
| 1 February 2024 | 1.50% |
That’s a total of 6 years of wage freezes, with a 2.75% combined increase in the last contract and a 2% increase in the previous contract. That’s 4.75% when we add up both contracts.
Meanwhile, between September 2025 (their last raise prior to these two contracts) and September 2024, the consumer price index in Alberta increased 34.6 points, from 134.6 to 169.2, a jump of 25.71%.
So, while these workers were expected to live off a 4.75% raise over this 9-yer period, inflation actually increased by nearly 26%, leaving them with a cut to real wages of 20.96%.
A 24% wage increase would be able to cover this shortfall, but that’d be over a 4-year period, and by that time, inflation would’ve increased even more, completely wiping out the remaining 3.04%.
Inflation since just this past September has increased 1.12% already.
The union is being very generous in their reduction of their original proposal, given that by the end of their contract (assuming they get 24%), they’d still be behind inflation.
The employer has yet to make a wage proposal, and the two parties won’t meet until September, which will mark nearly a year since negotiations began.
Hopefully, the school district will take the summer to put together a reasonable offer for these workers instead of taking the summer off to drag out negotiations in an effort to pressure workers to accept an even smaller increase out of desperation.
The last contract took two years to negotiate, and the previous one took 2.5 years. Fingers crossed they can get this one ratified in less than a year.
