At the end of last month, education support workers in the communities of Morinville and Legal announced plans for a work-to-rule campaign, starting the day after Labour Day.
These workers are employed with the Greater St. Albert Roman Catholic Separate School Division and are represented by Local 2550 of the Canadian Union of Public Employees.
During a work-to-rule campaign, workers reduce their labour to just essential activities, refusing any additional work they’re asked to perform.
It’s a way to go on strike without having to remove all labour from the workplace, particularly as school has just barely come back in session.
The educational support workers will use the extra time their work-to-rule campaign frees up to spend an hour each morning on information picket lines set up outside of schools in the district.
Frustrated with the employer’s stubbornness during negotiations, the workers felt they’ve exhausted all their less disruptive options. One proposal the school district had submitted to the worker’s bargaining team was wage cuts to some new workers, which could be as high as 10%.
Naturally, the workers were opposed to wage cuts and asked for the employer to remove them from their proposals, but they refused.
Two-tier wage structures hurts workers in both stages. Workers in the lower-paid stage get less money, and workers in the higher-paid stage get less work, since employers will be incentivized to prioritize lower paid workers.
And considering that these education support workers haven’t received a raise in over 8 years, they’re not at all motivated to support a cut to wages for new workers or a cut to hours for longer term workers.
The average education support worker employed by the Greater St. Albert Roman Catholic Separate School Division makes only $34,000 a year, which works out to $16.35 an hour, based on a 40-hour work week and 52 weeks a year.
These workers include office support, educational assistants, lab assistants, library technicians, speech language pathologist assistants, and cafeteria workers.
Their last contract expired over two years ago, in August 2022.
A day after the workers were set to start their work-to-rule campaign, they announced that they managed to reach a tentative agreement with the employer, which includes the removal of proposed wage cut and wage increases for the first time since 2016.
The agreement still must be ratified by all the workers, and CUPE Local 2550, nor the school district, hasn’t released the details of the tentative contract.
According to local president, Mary Morin, however, the raise still won’t be high enough.
“School Divisions are challenged to recruit and retain education support staff because wages are still too low. There is still work to do to ensure our members receive a fair wage that allows them to focus on their students and not a second our third job.”
Local 2550 also stated in their announcement that the new contract, because the previous one expired over two years ago, has already expired, even though it still has yet to be ratified.
The bargaining team will have very little time to rest before needing to begin the negotiations process for the next contract. Hopefully, this process will be a bit quicker.
