It’s been a busy week for striking education support workers from 8 Alberta school districts this week.
The workers, who represent non-teaching workers—such as educational assistants, library workers, administrative assistants, and custodians—have been working on expired contracts.
As well, they’ve been dealing with year after year of wage over the last decade, and on the rare occasion that they did get a wage increase, it was tiny.
They had finally had enough, and they told the province that the raises they were forcing their employers to offer them was not enough. They needed more.
As I reported earlier, workers employed by the Fort McMurray Public School Division and Fort McMurray Catholic Schools were the first to approve a new contract. The workers voted overwhelmingly in favour of the new agreement proposed to them by their employers and that the Canadian Union of Public Employees said contained “a wage package higher than the original government ‘mandate’”.
Yesterday, CUPE announced that two more of their locals approved their tentative agreements. Members of Local 3550, who are employed by the Edmonton Public School Division, voted 94% in favour of the settlement.
Parkland School Division workers, represented by Local 5543, also approved their new collective agreement, with 97% being in favour of it.
Later in the day, they also announced that workers employed by the Calgary Board of Education and the Black Gold School Division approved their tentative agreements.
The Calgary workers (Local 40) voted 92% in favour, and 87% of Black Gold workers (Local 3484) approved their new contract.
This morning, CUPE published another media release on their website indicated that 2 of the remaining 3 school districts had also approved their tentative agreements.
CUPE 520 members employed by the Calgary Catholic School Division voted 93% in favour of theirs, and Sturgeon School Division workers (Local 4625) voted 80% to approve theirs.
The only group of workers who hasn’t yet approved an agreement are those employed by the Foothills School Division, who are represented by Local 5040. Their vote starts tomorrow.
So, to summarize:
| Fort McMurray Public School Division | 88.1% |
| Fort McMurray Catholic Schools | 72.9% |
| Edmonton Public School Division | 94.0% |
| Parkland School Division | 97.0% |
| Calgary Board of Education | 92.0% |
| Black Gold School Division | 87.0% |
| Calgary Catholic School Division | 93.0% |
| Sturgeon School Division | 80.0% |
Thousands of education support workers went on strike, forcing the province to approve the school districts to table a higher offer.
Workers in Fort McMurray were back on the job yesterday. Edmonton and Parkland workers were set to head back to work today. Calgary public education workers were supposed to be in school today. Students in Black Gold schools should be seeing some familiar faces starting tomorrow. Meanwhile, Catholic school workers in Calgary will go back on Monday, and Sturgeon workers will be at work the following Monday.
It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out for Lethbridge education support workers who recently pulled out of mediation and are currently in the mandatory 14-day cooling off period that must precede a strike vote.
