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The Alberta Teachers’ Association says a provincewide strike will begin on Oct. 6, after its members voted overwhelmingly against a recent tentative deal with the province.
The union represents 51,000 public, Catholic and francophone teachers. Of 43,362 votes cast, 89.5 per cent were opposed to the deal and 10.5 per cent supported it.
ATA president Jason Schilling told reporters on Monday night he was unsurprised to see teachers rebuff their employers’ latest offer.
“The proposed agreement failed to meet the needs of teachers, failed to improve student classroom conditions in a concrete and meaningful way, and failed to show teachers the respect they deserve,” he said.
If teachers, vice-principals and principals walk off the job next week as promised, it will be the largest teacher walkout in Alberta history, and could affect more than 700,000 K-12 students.
While there was a large teacher strike in 2002, it did not include all Alberta teachers. If teachers walk off the job on Oct. 6, it will be the first provincewide teacher strike in history.
The now-rejected offer included a 12 per cent wage increase over four years, and proposed moving most teachers to one pay grid in September 2026. Some teachers who would have moved grids could have seen raises of up to an extra five per cent.
The ATA has said teachers’ wages have gone up 3.8 per cent during the last six years, while the cost of living in Alberta rose nearly 21 per cent.
The proposed wage increases are the same as in the recommendation voted down by teachers in May.
The offer also included a government promise to fund 3,000 more net new teaching positions provincewide by August 2028, along with 1,500 new educational assistant positions.
The province also said it would cover the $100 cost of COVID-19 vaccines for teachers who want them.
He said the turnout and the overwhelming number of teachers rejecting the offer should send a message to employers that they will need to offer a markedly better deal to get teachers back to negotiations.
“Teachers are burning out,” Schilling said. “Students don’t have the resources that they need in school to be successful, and we’re supposed to just take this as the status quo? It’s unacceptable to me, and it’s unacceptable to my members.”
Government claims ATA doesn’t know what teachers want
In a Monday night statement, Finance Minister Nate Horner said he was disappointed that teachers rejected the latest offer from the Teachers’ Employer Bargaining Association (TEBA), a group that negotiates with teachers on behalf of the government and the school boards.
“This is the second time teachers have rejected a potential settlement that provided what their union said teachers wanted in response to growing classroom complexities,” his statement read in part.
“With two failed ratification votes, I am left questioning whether the union fully understands what their members are seeking. If teachers did not want this deal, then why was it proposed by the ATA in the first place?”
Schilling has previously said the ATA bargaining committee proposed hiring 3,000 teachers as a last resort. He said the employers wouldn’t consider any caps on class sizes or numbers of students with complex needs.
Schilling said he believes it is deplorable that teachers have resorted to negotiating promises to hire more staff as part of contract talks.
At an unrelated town hall on Monday night, Premier Danielle Smith said her government needs to speak with teachers about getting more educational assistants into classrooms and constructing more new schools, but those investments take time.
‘It’s the last straw,’ teacher says
Red Deer parent and teacher Janelle Melenchuk said it did not surprise her to see her colleagues across the province reject the offer.
The Grade 7 teacher said a promise of 3,000 additional teachers and 1,500 educational assistants sounds like a lot, but wouldn’t make a big difference distributed between the province’s roughly 2,500 schools. She also worried it would be too easy for a government to renege on that promise before the positions were all created by 2028.
Melenchuk said she’s happy to see a strong vote result because she does not believe teachers have another option.
“We just feel like we have to do it because it’s like it’s the last straw,” she said. “Enough is enough. We can’t keep going on this way.”
Melenchuk said she finishes each school year feeling ineffective, because she feels that she couldn’t help all of her students. She said she didn’t used to feel like that at the start of her 21-year career.
There are students in class who are nonverbal, face medical challenges or need help using the toilet without appropriate school staff to help them, she said.
Melenchuk and her husband, who is also a teacher, have been saving money in preparation for the possibility of a teacher strike without pay.
Music teacher Marshall Tindall, who lives in Camrose, said the amount of support students receive in schools has drastically changed over the course of his career. He said struggling students referred for assessments sometimes don’t get them because school divisions don’t have enough professionals to see them.
Tindall said teachers have been promised wage increases by successive governments and those increases never materialized. He said he voted against the offer because he felt now was the time to take a stand.
“It doesn’t make sense that … Alberta, the richest province in the country, is funding education poorly compared to the other provinces who don’t have nearly as much as we do,” Tindall said.
Edmonton parent Greta Gerstner said she feels proud that teachers are willing to strike without pay to push back against what she says are deteriorating conditions in schools.
“If anybody’s been in a classroom lately, they would see truly how overcrowded and overwhelming it is for teachers,” said Gerstner, whose son is in Grade 11 and has a learning disability.
“It’s not sustainable and it’s just getting worse.”
Smith, Horner and Education and Childcare Minister Demetrios Nicolaides will hold a news conference in Calgary at noon on Tuesday to “provide an update on financial and educational supports available in the event of a teacher strike,” according to a news release.
Many Alberta school divisions have said they will cancel classes in the event of a teacher strike. Unions have instructed educational assistants not to perform any teacher duties in the event of a work stoppage.
Source: cbc
