Earlier this week, the Alberta Labour Relations Board published their most recent new applications report. In it was an application for a strike vote.
Local 4625 of the Canadian Union of Public Employees filed the application on 17 October 2024 on behalf education support workers employed by the Sturgeon School Division.
Based out of the town of Morinville, the school district oversees the operations of 18 schools in suburban Edmonton, primarily in Sturgeon County, including in the communities of Bon Accord, Gibbons, Lancaster Park, Legal, Morinville, Redwater, and St. Albert.
The 150 or so education support workers employed by the school division include library workers, administrative assistants, cafeteria workers, nurses, educational assistants, and clerks.
According to the application, the workers, through their union, have requested a strike vote that would be supervised by the labour relations board.
These workers have been waiting for over 4 years for a new collective agreement, given that their most recent contract expired in August 2020. And even that one was for just a year.
They’re getting tired of waiting for a new contract, which will likely be expired by the time it actually ends up being ratified, since their contracts have been 3-year contracts, the last one notwithstanding.
Plus, the two parties had been in mediation for 6 months as of August, and that doesn’t seem to be making any difference.
But it’s not just the school board dragging their feet on bargaining that’s frustrating these workers.
They also haven’t received a wage increase in nearly a decade. Their last raise was 2%, which they were given in September 2015.
| 1 September 2015 | 2.00% |
| 1 September 2016 | 0.00% |
| 1 September 2017 | 0.00% |
| 1 September 2018 | 0.00% |
| 1 September 2019 | 0.00% |
| 1 September 2020 | 0.00% |
| 1 September 2021 | 0.00% |
| 1 September 2022 | 0.00% |
| 1 September 2023 | 0.00% |
| 1 September 2024 | 0.00% |
On top of that, some of these workers are still making less than $18 an hour.
Getting no wage increases is bad enough on its own, but it’s even worse when you have to deal with skyrocketing inflation.
In September 2015, the last time these workers had a wage increase, the consumer price index in Alberta sat at 134.6, but it had jumped 34.6 points to 169.2 by September 2024. That’s a 25.7% increase.
Inflation was more than 12 times higher than the one wage increase these workers received over 9 years ago.
Let’s put this into perspective.
When you account for both inflation and that single tiny wage increase, these workers have seen a cut to real wages—wages adjusted for inflation—of 23.7%.
That means that for every $1000 they made in September 2015, it would be the same as making $763 today.
To put it another way, if they bought something for $1000 in September 2015, they’d either have to spend $1237 to buy the same thing today or be able to afford only $763 worth of that thing.
It’s going to be tough to convince this employer to sweeten their offer. Like other school boards currently in negotiations, the UCP government, through their Provincial Bargaining and Compensation Office, has mandated that school boards throughout the province offer no more than 2.75% for raises.
And that’s not just for the first year of the contract either. That’s for the entire contract. Even if they do get 2.75%, they’ll still be more than 20% behind inflation.
It’s a ludicrous offer, and school boards who refuse to offer anything other than that aren’t bargaining in good faith. Heck, they’re not even bargaining, when it comes down to it.
I reached out to Jocelyn Johnson, one of the communications representatives for CUPE for information on the application. Johnson confirmed that the ALRB has approved the strike vote, which will proceed this Friday (25th) and will be conducted online.
If the workers voted in favour of striking, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they will strike. Often, bargaining committees will take a strong strike mandate back to the employer as leverage to try to negotiate a better deal. If the Sturgeon School Division refuses to respond to the strike mandate in a significant way, then we could potentially see a strike soon.
This isn’t the first group of education workers to participate in a strike vote. Edmonton support workers voted last week to go on strike, and last month, workers in Fort McMurray threatened to go on strike. Plus, this past summer, education workers with the Catholic school board based in St. Albert threatened to run a work-to-rule campaign.
Because the ALRB doesn’t archive their new application reports, I’ve included this week’s report below.
One reply on “Sturgeon County ed. workers file for strike vote”
[…] employed by the Sturgeon School Division, who have been on strike since 13 January. They have been waiting for over 4 years for a new contract. Their ratification vote also begins […]