Late last week, the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees published an update on their website regarding contract negotiations for education workers in the Whitecourt area.
The 100 or so workers are employed by the Living Waters Catholic Separate School Division, which oversees 8 schools in Edson, Slave Lake, and Whitecourt.
These workers include secretaries, educational assistants, library workers, custodians, maintenance workers, technology workers, and various programme facilitators.
AUPE reported in their update that the workers’ bargaining team (which includes an educational assistant, a secretary, and a teacher assistant, with help from an AUPE negotiations officer) had reached a tentative agreement with the Living Waters school division.
The previous collective agreement for these workers expired last summer, which means that they have been working off an expired contract for the last 10 months.
The contract before that took over 2 years to settle.
According to the workers’ bargaining committee, these workers are set to receive at least 12% over the next 4 years, if they ratify the tentative agreement.
| 1 September 2024* | 3.00% |
| 1 September 2025 | 3.00% or $1.25%** |
| 1 September 2026 | 3.00% |
| 1 September 2027 | 3.00% or $1.25%** |
** whichever is greater
This is in line with what education workers in several school districts throughout Alberta received earlier this year after going on strike.
But like many of those workers, even 12% isn’t enough to help them recover from years of wage freezes and below inflation increases. Let’s take a look at their wage increases since 2015.
| 1 September 2016 | 0.00% |
| 1 September 2017 | 0.00% |
| 16 October 2018 | 1.00% |
| 1 September 2019 | 1.00% |
| 1 February 2020 | 0.50% |
| 1 September 2021 | 0.00% |
| 1 September 2022 | 0.00% |
| 1 June 2023 | 1.25% |
| 1 February 2024 | 1.50% |
That’s 5.25% over a 9-year period.
Meanwhile, the consumer price index in Alberta during this period increased 34.6 points, from 134.6 in September 2015 to 169.2 in September 2024. That a jump of 25.71%.
Let’s get this straight. Over the last 3 collective agreements, these workers got just 5.25% but inflation increased by roughly 5 times that amount.
This means that the workers ended up with cut to real wages of 20.46%.
A 12% increase will come nowhere close to covering that. It still leaves the workers with a real wage cut of over 8%, and that’s not even including inflation over the life of the new contract, which will drive up that real wage cut even more.
Here are a few other changes proposed in the tentative agreement.
- A new $2-per-hour premium for being a classroom supervisor, starting after two hours.
- Nutrition program leads would be eligible for safety footwear allowance
- Personal leave would be increased to 3 days from 1 days; however, there will be no carry-forward of these days.
- The school district will pay for medical notes under specified conditions.
A ratification vote will occur online starting tomorrow and ending on 23 June.
If the workers ratify the agreement, it will be in place until August 2028.
