Fort Mac ed workers waiting years for new contract

You probably heard that education workers in Fort McMurray threatened to go on strike last month.

What you may not have heard in the news coverage of that development is why.

The education workers are represented by the Canadian Union of Public Employees. They’re employed with two school divisions—Fort McMurray Public School Division and Fort McMurray Roman Catholic Separate School Division—and belong to separate locals of CUPE: Local 2545 and Local 2559, rerspectively.

They include education assistants, administrative support workers, child care services workers, custodians, tradespeople (such as HVAC technicians), library workers, IT workers, food services workers, and so on.

Workers organized with Local 2545 represent about 450 people, and they have been waiting for over 3 years for a new contract. Their last one expired in August 2021.

Local 2559 workers, on the other hand, number about 425 people, and their most recent contract expired a year before that, in August 2020.

A media release published last month by CUPE Alberta stated, “n the face of stagnating wages and the rising cost of living many education workers in Fort McMurray have taken second or even third jobs in order to make ends meet.”

That sentence doesn’t really capture the state of wages for these workers, however.

Let me show you what I mean.

Here is a table of the wage increases these workers have received over the last 10 years, according to Collective Agreement Wage Tables Educational Services published on the Government of Alberta website by Collective Bargaining Information Services.

	Local 2545	Local 2559
2013	0.00%	0.00%
2014	0.00%	0.00%
2015	1.00%	2.00%
2016	0.00%	0.00%
2017	0.00%	0.00%
2018	0.00%	0.00%
2019	1.00%	0.00%
2020	1.25%	0.00%
2021	0.00%	0.00%
2022	0.00%	0.00%
2023	0.00%	0.00%

Keep in mind that 2021, 2022, and 2023 (and 2020 for Local 2559) are not covered by a collective bargaining agreement, so it’s possible that a new agreement will introduce retroactive wage increases that will change the amounts in the last 3 years.

That being said, education workers in Fort McMurray’s Catholic school division have received a total wage increase of just 2% over the last decade.

Public school education workers fared a bit better at 3.25%, but they still had 8 years of wage freezes.

When we average it out over the entire period, we see that workers in Local 2559 got an annual increase of 0.18%, while Local 2545 workers averaged 0.30% per year.

It doesn’t take much to realize that neither group will have received enough of an increase to keep up with inflation, but let’s look at it anyhow.

In September 2012, Alberta’s consumer price index sat at 127.8, but by September 2023, it had ballooned to 166.0, and increase of 38.2 points, or 29.89%.

So, while these workers have been getting meagre raises of between 2% and 3.25% since September 2012, inflation had nearly hit 30% during the same period.

That’s not counting inflation since last September, which means inflation since September 2012 has probably passed the 30% mark.

As a result, these workers have received a cut to real wages—wages adjusted for inflation. And not a small one either.

When adjusting for their tiny raises and inflation, workers in the Catholic school division received a real wage cut of 27.89%, and the public school workers had theirs cut by 26.64%.

Here’s some more context.

For every $1,000 these workers made in September 2012, it’s now worth just $721.10 to $733.60 today, or rather, as of last September.

To put it another way, if these workers spent $1,000 on goods and services in September 2012, those same goods and services would’ve cost them between $1,266.40 and $1,278.90 last September, depending on which school district they worked for.

How can you support yourself, let alone a family, when costs are skyrocketing like that?

Is it any wonder these workers wanted to go on strike? They’ve been waiting for over a decade for decent wages. They’re frustrated and tired. They don’t want to be neglected and seen as a financial drain on society. They just want to support themselves and their families.

That’s why they’re working more than one job.

These workers had voted nearly 99% in favour of striking. But then the UCP government quashed their strike, the only tool they have left to force their employer to increase their wages.

The provincial government appointed two dispute inquiry boards to try and bring about a resolution within a 30-day period.

But how do resolve this if the workers are tired of nearly a decade of wage freezes and the employer refuses to increase wages to make up for those wage freezes.

If the two parties can’t negotiate an agreement after the 30 days expire next Thursday, then the nearly 900 workers can serve a second strike notice to their employers.

And let’s be clear.

The responsibility for this standoff doesn’t just lie with the school boards. They are restricted by the funding envelope given to them from the UCP government.

If the province increased total funding to both of these school districts, it’d be a lot easier to pay these workers what they’re worth.