St. Albert Protestant Schools and the union representing roughly 300 unionized staff have reached a new labour agreement that provides 5.9 per cent in raises over two years.
The school division’s board of trustees and the Canadian Union of Public Employees have reached a memorandum of agreement, as ratified by CUPE on April 20 and by the board on April 27. All that is left is a contract signing to make it official.
It is a fair deal, agree both sides, giving the employees a 2.9 per cent salary increase for the current school year and 3.0 per cent for the next one. It applies to any staff member that is not a teacher, or an upper-level administrator such as the superintendent.
A health spending account, to cover items not in the standard benefits package, is also a part of the deal.
Negotiations began in the fall.
“I think it certainly met our expectations,” said board chair Joan Trettler. “We felt we had to be reasonable with our staff. We couldn’t expect some staff to take no increase and then others to take increases, so we tried to balance that out.”
“For this time in the economy, yeah, we’re happy with the agreement,” said Bob Starko, CUPE Local 1099 president. “Pretty well what we were asking for, we got … It was a fair deal.”
Trettler said getting down to negotiations did come with some complications, though through no fault of either side.
“In the fall there was quite a bit of discussion about a new agreement between the [Alberta Teachers’ Association] and the province and what that would look like,” she said. I think both the support staff and the board felt there might be implications there, for all of our staff. So that was complicated. And then how would this year’s budget actually look?”
Starko said once the two sides actually got to the bargaining table things went smoothly.
He said the next round of negotiations in 2012, could be interesting.
“[The teachers’] agreement I believe runs out in 2012, too, so I guess it will be interesting to see what happens. Hopefully the government comes up with more money,” he said. “We’ll probably start [to look at that next round of negotiation) in the beginning of the year next year.”
The CUPE Local 1099 also includes secretarial, custodial and maintenance staff, teachers aides, interpreters, library technicians and lunchroom supervisors.
