Edmonton education workers vote to strike

Support workers employed by the Edmonton Public School Board recently held strike votes after contract negotiations came to a standstill.

Earlier this week, members of Local 3550 of the Canadian Union of Public Employees overwhelmingly voted in favour of striking. According to their website, 92% of their membership participated in the vote, with 97% of them indicating that they’re ready to go on strike.

Local 3550 represents all workers with the Edmonton Public School Board other than teachers, professional employees, and certain administrative assistants. They also don’t represent custodial workers (who are represented by Local 474) or tradespersons and maintenance workers (who are represented by Local 784) employed by EPSB.

Workers with Local 474 are still in the process of holding the strike votes. They held one on Thursday, and their last one will occur tomorrow.

Both sets of workers (Local 3550 and Local 474) haven’t had a new contract in over 4 years, ever since their previous one expired in August 2020.

According to CUPE Alberta, the Edmonton Public School Board have their hands tied on wage increases, after the UCP government mandated that they must not increase wages by more than 2.75% over 4 years.

That’s pathetic.

Take a look at the raises they got in their last contract, when the NDP were in power.

	Local 3550	Local 474
1 September 2017	0.00%	0.00%
1 September 2018	0.50%	0.00%
1 September 2019	1.00%	1.25%

In their last contracts, these workers got between 1.25% and 1.50%, and the provincial government wants them to have a 2.75% raise on a 4-year contract that will already have expired by the time it’s ratified?

The day before Local 3550 workers were scheduled to hold their strike vote, according to a CUPE Alberta media release, the school board called their negotiating team back to the bargaining table for another deal.

However, the deal was they wanted to extend the contract to 8 years—which would be good, considering it’s already expired—but the raise would remain at 2.75%.

How ridiculous.

A 2.75% raise in a 4-year contract gives these workers an average increase of 0.69% per year. Extending that same raise by another 4 years brings down the annual average to just 0.34%.

If that wasn’t enough to convince you that the UCP is hosing these 4,500 or so workers, let’s take a look at inflation.

In September 2016, the last time they got a raise prior to their most recent contract, the consumer price index in Alberta sat at 135.3. Fast forward eight years later to last month, when it had climbed to 169.2.

That’s an increase of 33.9, or 25.06%.

Inflation grew nearly 10 times in the last 8 years than the raise the UCP wants the school board to give these workers.

Let’s break this down a bit more.

So, if we add up the raises in the last contract (which expired over 4 years ago) and the raises the school board has proposed, we have a combined increase of 4.00% and 4.25% since 2016.

If we apply the 25.06% inflation to those numbers, we end up with a real wage cut of 20.81% and 21.06%.

How are you supposed to support yourself and your family when your purchasing power has been cut by more than 20% since 2016?

For every $1000 these workers made in September 2016, they made between $789.40 and $791.90 last month, adjusted for inflation and wage increases.

In other words, if they spent $1000 on goods and services in September 2016, those same goods and services would’ve cost $1201.10 and $1210.60 last month. Either that, or they’d be able to afford only $789.40–$791.90 of those same goods and services.

Keep in mind that some of these workers are still making less than $20 an hour.

Plus, according to Mandy Lamoureax, the president of Local 3550, these workers are being forced to take on greater workloads for these crap wages.

“It’s not enough. We know our membership needs to see more, given the years of rising cost-of-living, increasing workloads, and understaffing they have been enduring.”

Barry Benoit, Local 474’s president agrees.

“Health, safety, and respect for the work it takes to keep schools running are important to custodial staff, but the overwhelming issue is wages having fallen so far behind.”

On top of that, Benoit claims that Local 474 workers have benefits that are at the lowest level of all other workers employed by the Edmonton Public School Board.

Update (22 October 2024): According to a media release published today, Local 474 has voted in favour of striking. Of those who participated in the two-day strike vote, 97% voted in favour of striking. Local 3550 workers gave their strike notice to their employer, meaning their strike will officially begin on 24 October 2024, unless the school board comes back to the table to begin negotiating.