Last month, the Mediation Services department of Alberta Jobs, Economy, and Trade published the December 2024 Bargaining Update.
This monthly report provides information about the unionized workforce, primarily in Alberta. In December, Mediation Services received settlement information regarding 24 private sector and 10 public sector bargaining settlements, covering 2,429 and 3,797 workers respectively.
Among those settlements was a contract for about 900 workers employed by the Edmonton School Division.
These workers include all custodial staff employed by the Edmonton School Division, and they’re represented by Local 474 of the Canadian Union of Public Employees.
The previous contract for these workers expired in August 2020. The new contract was settled in December 2024, over 4 years later.
As of September 2017, when they settled their previous contract, there were 946 unionized workers under this collective agreement, which means the school division has eliminated roughly 50 custodial positions over the last 7 year. That’s 1 in 20 custodial workers no longer working for the school division.
The bargaining update didn’t include the entire new 8-year contract, but it did include information on wage increases.
| 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% |
| 1 September 2024 | 3.00% |
| 1 September 2025 | 3.00% |
| 1 September 2026 | 3.00% |
| 1 September 2027 | 3.00% |
This amounts to a combined increase of 14.75%, or an annual average increase of 1.84%.
And while 14.75% might seem like a lot, let’s not get too excited just yet. After all, that includes 3 years of wage freezes.
But check out what wage increases looked like over the previous 2 collective agreements:
| 1 September 2017 | 0.00% |
| 1 September 2018 | 0.00% |
| 1 September 2019 | 1.25% |
So, between 1 September 2016, their last raise prior to these contracts, and 1 September 2024, they received wage freezes in 5 of those 8 years.
Now let’s compare these to inflation.
The consumer price index in Alberta sat at 135.3 in September 2016, and it increased 33.9 points to 169.2 by September 2024. That’s an increase of 25.06%.
Since these workers got an increase of 7.00% over an 8-year period but inflation was 25.06% during the same period, they’re left with a cut to real wages of 18.06%.
And they’re scheduled to get just 12% over the next 4 years, which will still leave them with a real wage cut of 6.06%. However, that’s not even factoring inflation this year, next year, and the final year of the contract, which will most assuredly increase, bringing real wages down even more.
While an increase of nearly 15% might seem like a lot, these workers will have less purchasing power than they did 8 years ago despite technically making more money now.
These workers should’ve received at least 30% to make up for lost wages and plan for future inflation.
What they did get is better than 8 years of wage freezes, but it still leaves them behind economically.
8 replies on “Edmonton custodial workers get 14.5% raise”
Wondering if the report made any mention of the added “me too” clause that guaranteed them any additional increases that epsb support and maintenance workers get (if they are successful in negotiating more than what custodians got.)
Good question. Hopefully we’ll know once they release the full contract.
I saw nothing that tells how much they were earning per hour before or after the increase. Instead all I saw was a bunch of words and numbers that felt more like a fluff piece
Did you click on the link to the new contract that I provided in the article?
Sometimes, wages isn’t the only thing to look at when negotiating a new contract. This article left out a lot of other bonuses they got, like matching their Health Benefits to match the rest of the other divisions Health Benefits (they had way less than the rest), they got a no contracting out until 2035 which means they got job security until then, and they got a lot of language in the contract sorted out that was needed to be addressed since even 2012. But now that those things are taken care of, in 2027, when they renegotiate a new contract, only thing left is the wages. I’d say they got a WAY better deal than this article is posting, and it’s not fair to say they didn’t get anything from this bargaining.
The article didn’t say that they didn’t get anything from bargaining.
And the article left out all those other things because the full contract isn’t available yet, just the wages, as the article mentioned.
I think this article does a great job of explaining this event and its’ significance for those workers, but it’s just the tip of a continent-sized iceberg.
I’ve been in the workforce for over 40 years and have personally witnessed the erosion of real wages as huge corporations cut front-line and lower-management staff to fatten executive salaries and bonuses. Governments have followed suit, as it now seems to be standard that politicians award themselves a 20-35% raise as soon as they take office, then plead poverty when Government workers ask to keep up with the cost of living. This means the workers are subsidizing our health care, education, really every essential service in order to keep society functioning. Yet every time they negotiate a contract the rhetoric they hear uses words like “greedy” and “lazy” and “just lucky to have a job.” Even though Canadian workers tend to be skilled and efficient workers, there is no guarantee of an annual raise of any kind, job security, or even full-time hours with benefits. Imagine how different our society would be if workers (aka “taxpayers”) everywhere were treated as essential, valuable and deserving of the simply dignity of a comfortable living.
Thanks for chiming in.
I have discussed real wages in an earlier article.
https://albertaworker.ca/news/alberta-had-largest-real-wages-cut-in-canada/