The potential of a teachers’ strike still looms over parents and grade school students in Alberta, going into week two of the new school year.
Negotiations between the Alberta government and teachers’ union broke down late last month, and both sides were still at an impasse over the weekend, seemingly waiting for the other to make the first move.
“Our entire family is on hold,” said Adina Green, a mother of two sons, ages nine and 15 respectively.
The family doesn’t pay for daycare or after-school care, and will rely on retired relatives to help if a strike does happen, she said. But those family members are on standby until then.
Green recognizes there has to be three-days’ notice before a strike or lockout occurs, but she said her biggest fear is she’ll wake up one morning and the teachers will be off the job.
“It’s just an uncertain time, and it’s knots in your stomach,” she said.
There have been a lot of updates to the labour relations battle recently, so here is what you need to know about the situation as of Monday morning.
The Alberta Teachers’ Association (ATA), which represents 51,000 full- and part-time teachers, was granted a strike mandate.
But the provincial labour relations board confirmed lock-out vote results from the Teachers’ Employer Bargaining Association (TEBA), the provincial body that represents school boards in collective bargaining, giving school boards the authority to lock teachers out.
As of Saturday, the parties haven’t talked since late August, ATA president Jason Schilling told CBC News.
In a statement issued Friday evening, Finance Minister Nate Horner said TEBA is ready to return to the bargaining table.
The teachers are also willing to return to the table, but they need to see more respect and value placed on their work, Schilling said.
“The last time I checked, phones work both ways,” Schilling said. “If government is interested in sitting down, and they say that they respect and value the work that teachers do, they also can pick up the phone and give us a call to say, ‘Hey, let’s have a conversation.’
“They’re aware of our position that we had at the table.”
In the Friday statement, Horner called out the union’s bargaining team, saying its refusal to bargain now isn’t an effective strategy and is unfair to the province’s teachers.
TEBA had proposed a package that would cost $2.3 billion, and included a wage increase — 12 per cent over four years — and a commitment to hire 3,000 new teachers during the span of the collective agreement, according to the statement.
The teachers’ union had asked to hire more teachers, the statement said, adding that the union had said it would help teachers handle population growth and “classroom complexity pressures.”
Taking on that many more teachers is estimated to cost $750 million, the statement said. Horner noted that presents a fiscal challenge, given the forecasted budget deficit, “but we were committed to reaching a fair deal for teachers and stability for students and families.”
The union is holding out for higher wages to keep up with inflation and “something that recognizes that their workload has increased over the years,” Schilling said.
The previous collective agreement ran from September 2020 through August 2024. Alberta’s consumer price index, a measure of inflation, rose roughly 17 per cent in that time, Statistics Canada data shows.
According to Schilling, teachers’s wages increased 5.75 per cent in the past decade.
Regarding Horner’s comments about the province’s finances, Schilling said previous administrations — specifically naming those of Conservative Alison Redford and NDP Rachel Notley — had also asked for teachers to take less during fiscal crises, with the promise they would get more later.
“That stuff has never come to fruition,” he said.
Assuming a deal isn’t reached, two things could happen: teachers strike or get locked out before Oct. 6, the deadline to take job action.
Should the teachers strike, they will not get strike pay.
Still no word on whether Alberta teachers will strike or be locked out
Schilling confirmed the union has a special emergency fund, but said members were told they would not receive money from that pot.
The fund is used for “running the strike [and] supporting locals in other capacities,” he said.
Teachers could get locked out, but Horner has previously said that would only happen as a “reactionary response, if it appears that union tactics could harm students and families.”
