Grande Prairie ed workers get 12% raise

Last month, the Mediation Services department of Alberta Jobs, Economy, and Trade published the February 2025 Bargaining Update.

This monthly report provides information about the unionized workforce, primarily in Alberta. In February, Mediation Services received settlement information regarding 16 private sector and 5 public sector bargaining settlements, covering 1,598 and 3,407 workers respectively.

Among those settlements was a contract for over 300 workers employed by Grande Prairie & District Catholic Schools.

This school district oversees 14 schools in Beaverlodge, Grande Prairie, Sexsmith, and Spirit River.

The workers in this collective agreement include various education support workers, including educational assistants, library workers, secretaries, IT technicians, clerks, custodians, maintenance workers, and instructors in mechanics, early learning, culinary arts, and life skills. They’re represented by Local 328 of Unifor.

The previous contract expired last August. The new contract wasn’t settled until this past February, but it’s retroactive to September 2024.

The new collective agreement is for 4 years, expiring in August 2028. The previous agreement was also for 4 years, which itself deviated from the norm of 3-year contracts for these workers.

The workers are set to receive wage increases in every year of their new contract.

1 September 2024	3.00%
1 September 2025	3.00%
1 September 2026	3.00%
1 September 2027	3.00%

Over the course of the contract, wages will have increased a combined 12% (12.55% if you account for compounding increases).. That’s an annual average increase of—well—3% (3.14%).

That’s better than the 2 years of wage freezes followed by just 2.75% in the previous contract or the 2 years of freezes in the contract before that followed by 3%.

To summarize, here are the past and proposed increases over a decade:

1 September 2017	0.00%
1 September 2018	0.00%
1 September 2019	3.00%
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%
1 September 2024	3.00%
1 September 2025	3.00%
1 September 2026	3.00%
1 September 2027	3.00%

All in, that’s 17.75% (19.13%) since the raise they got in September 2016. During that same period, the consumer price index in Alberta rose 25.06%.

Okay. That’s not quite true. It rose 25.06% up until September 2024, so there are 3 more years of inflation yet to come.

Even if we assume inflation will be flat for the next 3 years, it still means that because inflation was 25.06% and their combined wage increase was 17.75% (19.13%), they’re left with a 7.31% (5.93%) cut to real wages.

Of course that real wage cut will become even more pronounced by the end of the contract as 3 more years of inflation accumulate.

Either way, while a 12% wage increase is better than 2.5 years of wage freezes like they got in their last contract, they’re still trying to catch up to an increased in their cost of living.

Here are some changes between new collective agreement and the previous one.

Accounting clerks and mental health therapists were added to the list of workers exempt from this bargaining unit.

Several instances of “The Board” in the collective agreement were changed to “The Superintendent or designate”.

The following was removed from the collective agreement:

4.2 The Division shall post for a period of 5 working days all training programs or courses offered by the Division that exceed 8 hours in length. The bulletin shall contain the name and dates of the course and where more information can be obtained.

Under the previous agreement, the 120-day probationary period could be extended by 30 days. The extension has been reduced to 20 days in the new agreement.

This clause was also removed from the contract:

10.4 A Kindergarten Educational Assistant performing the duties of a Kindergarten Instructor during a teacher’s/instructor’s absence shall be paid at the Kindergarten Instructor rate.

The regular workweek for educational assistants and personal care educational assistants has been reduced from 35 hours to a minimum of 30 hours. As well, this has been added to the agreement for these specific workers: “The Principal shall schedule the hours of work to meet the needs of the students and the school. Each daily work shift shall fall between 8:00 a.m. and 4:30 p.m., Monday to Friday.”

Workers had to be scheduled for 6 hours in a day to get their 2 paid 15-minute breaks. Now, they have to be scheduled for 7 hours.

Pensionable hours have changed in the new collective agreement:

	Previous	New
Educational assistants¹	1,169 hours	1,300 hours
Secretaries & library workers²	1,299 hours	1,550 hours
Instructors³	1,560 hours	1,680 hours
Maintenance, IT & custodial workers⁴	2,080 hours	2,080 hours

The list of general holidays, which are the holidays used to determine stat pay, have been adjusted so that “Easter Monday or the Monday of Spring Break, if possible” is now just “Easter Monday”.

Compassionate care leave has been increased from 3 days to 4 days per year to care for a spouse, child, or parent who is ill or to attend the medical or dental appointment of a spouse or child.

The head custodian allowance has increased. Here is the increase for those hired after 19 October 2022.

	Hired before Oct 2022	Hired after Oct 2022	New
1st person supervised	$5,416	$5,484	$5,579
2nd person supervised	$3,791	$3,838	$3,906
3rd person supervised	$2,653	$2,687	$2,733
4th person supervised	$1,859	$1,882	$1,915
4+ persons supervised	$1,300	$1,316	$1,339

Paid domestic violence leave no longer appears in the collective agreement.

Language has been changed throughout the agreement to make it more gender inclusive (e.g. “their” instead of “his/her”).