U of C researchers to get 7.5% wage increase

Earlier this month, the Mediation Services department of Alberta Jobs, Economy, and Trade published their May 2024 Bargaining Update, which includes details on recently settled collective agreements.

One of the agreements was between Postdoctoral Fellows Association of the University of Calgary and the board of governors of the University of Calgary.

PDAC represents about 550 workers employed in the university as researchers who have completed their doctoral degrees.

Their previous agreement has expired at the end of 2023. The new agreement is effective as of 1 January 2024 and will be in effect until the end of June in 2028, so about 4.5 years.

These workers are set receive 4 wage increases during the length of the contract.

1 July 2024	2.00%
1 July 2025	2.00%
1 July 2026	1.75%
1 July 2027	1.75%

That’s a combined 7.5%, or an average of 1.88% per year.

As well, the minimum salary is set to increase 4 times during the same period.

1 July 2024	12.50%
1 July 2025	8.89%
1 July 2026	4.08%
1 July 2027	3.92%

The minimum stipend/salary coming into the contract sat at the equivalent of $19.23 an hour (assuming a 40-hour workweek) and will increase to $25.50 an hour by the end of the contract.

These increases might seem significant, but these workers received no increases in their last contract, which lasted for 3 years.That means that the 7.5% combined increase in this new contract works out to just 1.07% per year, on average, between the two contracts.

Keep in mind that the consumer price index for Alberta sat at 145.8 in January 2021, the start of the previous contract. By this past January, it had increased by more than 20 points to 165.9.

In other words, inflation rose 13.78% during that time, nearly double all the raises over the last 3 years and the next 4 years combined.

That means real wages—wages adjusted for inflation—for these workers took a 6.28% hit.

For every $1,000 these workers spent on goods and services in January 2021, it would cost them $1,062.80 today for those same goods and services. Or to put it another way, that same $1,000 would allow them to purchase only $937.20 worth of those same goods and services today.

And that’s assuming they get all of their raises now, which of course they don’t. As well, that’s not taking into consideration inflation from this year (which has already increased 2.11% since the end of 2023), inflation from next year, and inflation from the last two years of the new contract.

Obviously, the hit to real wages is going to be even more severe by the end of the contract.

So, when seen in context, these increases are not significant at all. In fact, they’re vastly inadequate.

Here are a few of the other changes from the new contract.

In the previous contract, to be eligible for a postdoctoral appointment, workers had to have received their postgraduate doctoral degree (or an equivalent) within the last 5 years. That has now been increased to 7 years.

New to the contract is a $500 flexible spending account, which full-time workers who have been with the U of C for at least 6 months can use to pay for select health and wellness expenses.