After roughly two-and-a-half-years of negotiating, the Alberta Teachers’ Association (ATA) has reached a tentative four-year agreement with the provincial government.
The tentative agreement includes no raises for the first three years and a two per cent raise for teachers during the fourth year, as well a one-time lump sum payment that same year.
Pembina Hills school division ATA rep Perry Kulmatyski said the decision was made behind closed doors, adding the details have yet to be voted on by teachers across the province. Kulmatyski said it was unclear how the new agreement would pan out for teachers at Pembina Hills.
“I was reading the press release and it said, ‘40,000 teachers have accepted this deal,’ but 40,000 teachers have no clue about what just happened,” Kulmatyski said.
“It’s a tentative agreement and, really, nobody except those very few parties (aside from Premier Alison Redford, the Alberta Education Minister Jeff Johnson, among few others) and even including the school board know what’s happening, based on what I read in the news.”
Kulmatyski’s information about the agreement was limited on Friday afternoon, but after attending a meeting held at the ATA headquarters in Edmonton on Saturday morning, he felt better informed.
Kulmatyski said there are currently no dates set for a resolution or ratification vote despite the province-wide deadline for teachers. He is optimistic more information would be available for teachers after a Pembina Hills Local 22 meeting on Tuesday night.
The four-year provincial framework will see the salaries of roughly 40,000 teachers frozen for three years before receiving a two-per-cent increase during 2015, and a one-time “lump sum” payment.
“Obviously there’s a sacrifice made by teachers,” Kulmatyski said. “Three zeroes is probably not what they were expecting or maybe what they really wanted, but in the end, the biggest priority for teachers when they spoke about what they wanted to see in their new agreement was conditions for best practice — what do we need to say in terms of working conditions that allows us to be as good as we can be, and I think that’s what this deal’s about. They need to sacrifice due to the economic times of the province and with that, I think this deal makes some movement towards better working conditions for teachers and that’s what they have to decide.”
However, he added it would be unfair to comment about his personal speculations about what teachers will say.
“I don’t want to speak for teachers who haven’t even looked at it yet,” Kulmatyski said. “I think it’s important for teachers to be informed based on what they see and make their own decision because in the end it’s their profession.
“They’re the ones in the trenches.”
When a contract expires, like this one did last August, it automatically defaults to the terms from their previous deal. That means teachers are working within a set of regulations they’re familiar with and will have some time to review information on a long-term agreement.
And while no dates have been vetted yet for a vote, Kulmatyski said the process will likely drag out until after spring break.
However, Barrhead-Morinville-Westlock MLA Maureen Kubinec was elated about the prospect of the news.
“I see this as four years of labour peace where we can just deal with things like the Inspiring Education Initiative,” Kubinec explained. “What we’ve had for the last four years is labour peace, where everybody was focused just on education, they weren’t focusing on negotiations or any of those kinds of things, they were focused on education and that’s why I’m really pleased to see we’ve got another four years of labour peace.”
She said teachers work “incredibly hard” and knows because her daughter-in-law is a teacher. But Kubinec emphasized the biggest point of debate during the negotiations was surprisingly not the wages.
“Even in negotiations the money wasn’t the main issue,” she said. “Teachers were concerned about time spent in front of students so I think this is kind of the path they’ve been going down for two years. I’m proud of our teachers for recognizing we’re in tight financial times and we all have to deal with the reality of the situation we’re in.
“And just so you know, when I say the money wasn’t the biggest thing, they’ve committed to a study on teacher workload issue and that I think was the bigger piece,” she added.
But for others, the discussion appeared “hectic” and left out a lot of blanks.
Pembina Hills chair, Sharon Volorney, said she was unsure about what the new terms of the contract were or what a likely resolution might be. When asked about the news, Volorney replied she had just returned to work from a couple of days off and hadn’t heard about the details.
“I haven’t heard anything yet,” Volorney said. “So, until we get into the meat and potatoes of it, it’s really hard to say what kind of effect it would have on Pembina Hills.”
