Alberta’s education minister says he’s going to impose an agreement on Alberta’s teachers and school boards this week – a move the head of St. Albert’s public teachers’ union denounced as undemocratic.
Alberta Education Minister Jeff Johnson tabled Bill 26 in the legislature Tuesday. If passed, the bill will impose a provincial framework agreement on wages and other matters on all 62 of Alberta’s school boards and their associated teachers’ unions, whether they supported the deal or not.
St. Albert Public Teachers Local No. 73 voted against the deal earlier this year.
The deal proposes a three-year wage freeze for teachers followed by a two-per-cent raise in 2015-2016, in addition to a one-time, lump-sum payment from the province equal to one per cent of a teacher’s salary in 2015.
Under the deal, St. Albert Public and Catholic teachers will also get one-time raises of 0.03 and 0.57 per cent, respectively, to bring their wages up to the provincial average.
The original deal required all 62 of Alberta’s school boards and their associated locals to support it by May 13 in order to go forward.
As of late Monday afternoon, Johnson said in a press conference, 60 boards and 60 locals had said yes to the deal, while one board (Calgary Board of Education, the largest board in the province) and two locals (Local No. 73 and Elk Island Public Schools No. 28) had said no. (Clearview Public Schools in Stettler had yet to vote as of press deadline.)
This deal was three years in the making, Johnson said in a teleconference Monday, and was supported by about 97 per cent of boards and teachers. “It’s time to move on.”
Johnson said he had several options he could use to save the deal, including legislation, none of which were palatable. Even if he fired the elected Calgary board, he still would not have the unanimous consent needed for the deal to pass in its original form.
“What we’re doing here is respecting (Calgary’s) choice and respecting their decision,” he said, “but we’re also respecting the decision of these 60 or 61 other boards.” He said his decision to legislate a settlement was prompted by the Calgary board’s rejection of the deal.
A seething Ellen Snaith, the head of St. Albert’s Local 73, said that she was disappointed and disillusioned with Johnson’s decision, as it negated the whole negotiating process. “You can’t change the rules of a democracy as you please.”
A province-wide agreement gives Alberta the labour peace it needs to make schools more student-focused, said Jacquie Hansen, St. Albert Catholic board trustee and president of the Alberta School Boards Association (ASBA). “Overwhelmingly, there is support to get this provincial deal done.”
St. Albert public board chair Joan Trettler said it was “unfortunate” that the province chose to go this route, noting that some provisions of the agreement (such as the requirement for boards to create committees to look at teacher workloads) eroded board autonomy. “The process needs to be seriously examined.”
Johnson also said that the current negotiation process was “broken,” and committed to working with the Alberta Teachers’ Association and the ASBA to fix it.
“One school board can hold the entire province hostage and hold up a deal for 600,000 kids,” he said, referring to the fact that, under the current negotiating structure, a single “no” vote can scuttle a provincial deal. “You’ve got a situation where you’ve got seven trustees that can make the decision for 600,000 students.”
Trettler and Snaith both called for a return to local bargaining and an end to province-wide deals. “This has nothing to do with money,” Snaith said. “It has everything to do with local bargaining.”
This decision has serious implications for board and union autonomy, Snaith said. “Now we only have local autonomy if you agree with the pack,” she said. “I think we all need to take a second look at what democracy really means.”
Johnson said he hoped to have the bill passed by the Legislative Assembly by the end of the week.
