Last week, the Mediation Services department of Alberta Jobs, Economy, and Trade published the August 2024 Bargaining Update.
This monthly report provides information about the unionized workforce, primarily in Alberta. Last month, Mediation Services received settlement information regarding 28 private sector and 9 public sector bargaining settlements, covering 2,361 and 1,857 workers respectively.
Among those settlements was a contract for nearly 200 education workers employed by the Horizon School Division, which is based out of Taber.
The school division oversees schools in not only Taber but also Barnwell, Enchant, Grassy Lake, Hays, Lomond, Milk River, Vauxhall, and Warner, as well as school on several local Hutterite colonies.
The workers are represented by Local 3203 of the Canadian Union of Public Employees and include administrative assistants, educational assistants, library workers, caretakers, maintenance workers, speech language pathologists, sign language interpreters, food service workers, educational behviour consultants, and couriers.
Their previous contract, which lasted for only one year—expired back in August 2020, but their new contract was settled just this past June, nearly 4 years later.
Plus, because the new 4-year contract took nearly 4 years to negotiate, it’s now expired, having only two months left after it was ratified.
But at least they were able to negotiate a contract before it expired this time. The last contract was settled in January 2021, four months after it had expired.
After years of bargaining (they started in December 2021), things came to a standstill—probably because the workers didn’t want to settle for wage freezes again—so it went to mediation this past February. So, the following changes were what came out of mediation.
According to the bargaining update, these workers received wage freezes in the each of the first three years of the new contract.
| 1st year | 0.00% |
| 2nd year | 0.00% |
| 3rd year | 0.00% |
| 1 Sep 2023 | Market adjustment |
| 1 Feb 2024 | 2.75% |
The market adjustment varied between positions, ranging from just 0.27% for Mennonite coordinators and 11.03% for educational assistants.
While a raise of 11% might seem a lot of educational assistants, it still brought wages to $18.82 per hour for first-year EAs, and they still were stuck below $20 an hour with the 2.75% raise they received in February.
The market adjustment did not apply to operation and maintenance administrative assistants.
Also, workers with an approved training certificate, for applicable positions, received an additional $1 per hour.
These wage increases, as meagre as they are, are the first raises these workers have received in years. Caretaker assistants, early learning educators, speech language pathologists, food service workers, educational behavioural consultants, and sign language interpreters, for example, haven’t seen a raise since at least 2015.
These raises will do very little to help these workers deal with skyrocketing cost of living. It’s better than nothing, but many of them will still struggle to support themselves and their families
Here are some highlights of other changes between the previous contract and the new contract.
The term “temporary employee”, under the previous contract, referred to anyone who was hired “hired for a specific job of a one-time nature, a work overload, a position that is directly tied to specific grants or funding”. Now, it refers to anyone “hired to replace an employee who is absent due to vacation, sickness, authorized leave of absence for 3 or more months, or to meet an increase in workload for greater than 3 months duration.”
The probationary period for new workers has been reduced from 90 days to 60 days in the new contract.
The following two sections regarding new classifications have been removed in the new contract:
6.3 If the Union objects to the salary structure established by the Employer and by negotiation succeeds in revising the salary structure, the revised salary structure shall be retroactive to the date the new position was implemented.
6.4 Failing resolution of the matter by negotiation, within a further thirty (30) calendar days of receipt of the notice from the Employer, it may be referred to arbitration as hereinafter provided.
When the employer chooses who use to fill vacancies, newly created positions, transfers, and promotions, they now have to consider only the qualifications and past performance from the past 2 years. Previously, there was no limit.
The new contract adds language around progressive discipline regarding the employer having to discipline any workers. This refers to starting with an informal verbal warning, then, if necessary, a formal disciplinary meeting, followed by a letter of concdern, suspension, and dismissal, if needed.
As well, if the employer sends a worker home pending the outcome of an investigation, that worker will still receive full pay, benefits, and seniority.
If 24 months have occurred since the worker was disciplined, they now can have the discipline removed from their file. The request has to be in writing, and they must not have received other discipline since then.
Workers who have been with the school division for over 25 years will now qualify for 30 days worth of vacation every year. The previous cut-off was 20 years, and they got 25 days of vacation.
When a worker requests a leave of absence, the employer must now respond within 5 working days. There was no limit in the previous contract.
Personal leave has increased from 3 days to 5 days in the new contract, which workers can use for “attending to private concerns”.
New to the contract is a prohibtion that prevents the school division from terminating the employment of a worker who is on “a job-”an Employment Standards Code job-protected leave”.
Because this contract has already expired, the bargaining team for these workers will have very little opportunity to rest before having to begin negotiations on a new contract.
