Earlier this month, the Mediation Services department of Alberta Jobs, Economy, and Trade published the June 2024 Bargaining Update.
This monthly report provides information about the unionized workforce, primarily in Alberta. Last month, Mediation Services received settlement information regarding 30 private sector and 11 public sector bargaining settlements, covering 2,728 and 1,181 workers respectively.
One of those settlements was between the Red Deer Catholic Separate School Division and Local 417 of the Canadian Union of Public Employees.
These workers have been without a new contract since their previous one expired in August 2022, just 6 months after the two parties approved the agreement.
Both the school district and the workers approved this new contract just last month, on 28 June.
Mediation Services hasn’t yet published the full version of the new contract, so I can’t provide a comprehensive comparison of the two contract.
They did provide information on wage increases, however.
| 1 Sep 2022 | 0.00% |
| 1 Sep 2023 | 0.00% |
| 28 Jun 2024 | 2.75% |
I should point out that this new contract is for only two years, expiring at the end of next month, just two months after the contract was settled. That means that the 2.75% increase these workers will receive will be given to them in only the final two months of the contract.
The workers covered by this new contract are educational support workers, such as educational assistants, secretaries, library workers, and various casual workers.
In their last contract, which was only a one-year contract, the workers received a wage increase of 1%, and that didn’t come into effect until February 2022, 6 months after the contract went into effect.
The workers did receive a one-time lump sum payment of $155 in their last contract. Keep in mind that one-time lump sum payments don’t affect your base salary. If you made $30,000 in the 2021–2022 school year, you 1% raise would’ve been based on $30,000, not $30,155.
Something else to keep in mind is that in September 2020, a year before the previous contract took effect, the consumer price index in Alberta was 145. Last month, when the new raise was supposed to take effect, it had risen to 169.4.
That’s an increase of 24.4, or 16.83%.
So, while these workers are getting a combined wage increase of less than 4% over the course of both contracts, inflation grew 4.5 times faster.
That means that the workers will end up with a cut to their real wages—which are wages adjusted for inflation—of 13.08%.
In other words, if these workers spent $1000 on goods and services in September 2020, those same goods and services would’ve cost them $1130.80 last month.
Or to put it another way, that same $1000 would’ve bought only $869.20 worth of those same goods and services last month.
This employer is making it harder for these workers to support themselves and their families as the cost of living keeps increasing.
Because the new contract expires just next month, the bargaining team will have very little time to recuperate before having to begin negotiations on the next contract.
