St. Albert school board wants two-tier wages

Over 70 education support workers in the St. Albert area have been without a new contract since their previous one expired in August 2022.

Greater St. Albert Catholic Schools operates 17 Catholic elementary, middle, and high schools in the communities of Legal, Morinville, and St. Albert.

The workers are represented by Local 2550 of the Canadian Union of Public Employees and includes school assistants, cafeteria assistants, school office support workers and supervisors, educational assistants, laboratory assistants, library technicians, speech language pathologist assistants, and youth success coaches.

CUPE has published a website criticizing some of the proposals the school board made during bargaining. One of the proposals that website highlights is that the school board wants to introduce two-tier wages for education support workers.

The plan, according to the website, is for the school district to pay new workers less than those who are already employed in their schools.

I reached out to Mary Morin, the president of Local 2550, for more information and she gave me two examples. If the proposal is ratified, new educational assistant hires would be paid $1.42–2.94 less than those on the seniority list. New office support workers and cafeteria assistant hires will make $0.60- $1.13 less than those on the seniority list.

This means that recently-hired workers would get paid less than their longer-term coworkers, even if they’re performing the exact same job.

Two-tier wages encourage employers to give more hours to the lower-paid workers.

This is the same reasons universities hire sessionals instead of more faculty members. It’s a way for them to keep staffing levels stable (or to increase them) without having to spend less on wages. This is a pretty attractive tactic when school districts get provincial funding reductions.

If this goes through, it’ll make income for existing education support workers even more tenuous.

These workers haven’t received a wage increase since 2017, which means their income hasn’t kept up with inflation over the last nearly 7 years, reducing their purchasing power and making it harder for them to support themselves and their families.

In fact, that raise is also the only raise they’ve received since 2015, which makes for 6 years of wage freezes, not including last year and this year, which are still being negotiated.

1 Sep 2016	0%
1 Sep 2017	4%
1 Sep 2018	0%
1 Sep 2019	0%
1 Sep 2020	0%
1 Sep 2021	0%
1 Sep 2022	0%

That averages out to just 0.57% per year.

Meanwhile, in September 2015, the consumer price index in Alberta sat at 134.6, and by the time September 2022 rolled around, it had jumped to 160.1, an increase of 18.94%.

So, over a 7-year period, these workers received a 4% wage increase while inflation shot up by nearly 19%. That means real wages—wages adjusted for inflation—for these workers actually decreased by nearly 15%!

In other words, for every $1000 these workers spent on goods and services in September 2015, it would cost them $1189.40 for the same goods and services in September 2022.

Or to put it another way, $1000 in September 2022 would allow them to buy the equivalent of only $810.60 of those same goods and services that they purchased 7 years prior.

And remember, that’s just for inflation up until September 2022, when the last contract expired. Inflation has increased an additional 5.31% between September 2022 and April 2024, the most recent data we have available.

So, real wages have dropped past the 20% mark, unless these workers end up with more raises in the new contract.

Imagine how much worse off these workers will be financially if they end up with 3 more years of wage freezes and another year and a half of inflation.