Pembina Hills trustees and teachers have signed off on the province’s proposed four-year teacher labour deal.
Pembina Hills school division Alberta Teachers’ Association representative Perry Kulmatyski said roughly 80 per cent of local teachers voted in favour of the contract on April 3.
Teachers at St. Mary Catholic School are voting in Spruce Grove April 18 as part of the Evergreen Catholic Separate Division No. 2, although it is unknown when its trustees will vote. According to the Calgary Herald, only a handful of ATA locals across the province have voted on the deal so far.
“The vote wasn’t unanimous, but that’s understandable because it’s not perfect,” Kulmatyski said. “But it was around 80 per cent in favour of the deal.”
The tentative agreement sees no raises for the first three years and a two per cent raise during the fourth year, plus a one-time one per cent lump sum payment.
And after roughly two and a half years of negotiating, many teachers asked for clarification about what the new deal would mean, how it will impact students in the region and what process was used to determine the framework without engaging teachers in the process before the vote, said Kulmatyski, noting the discussion was informative and raised a lot of good questions.
Pembina Hills trustees echoed the decision by teachers voting unanimously in favour of the deal following an in camera session at their regular meeting in Barrhead on April 10.
Alberta Education Minister Jeff Johnson said on Friday that 33 of the province’s 62 school districts have come out in favour of the deal in advance of the province’s May 13 deadline.
“It’s going to be four years of labour peace where we don’t have to do any (negotiating), so that’s going to be wonderful,” said board chair Sharon Volorney. “There’s a lot of good things in it (the agreement) and some not so good things.”
While the board accepted the framework, Volorney said it will increase administrative costs.
“It’s going to create new committees to hear issues on previous matters, such as professional development, and that’s going to be hard to do as well because that’s money out of administration and time out of our administrative staff,” Volorney said.
“It’s definitely going to effect (Pembina Hills). It’s about $2 million short from what we had for Pembina Hills (schools) so we’ll just have to pull in our belts so we’ll make it work.”
The new agreement indicates the provincial government would not tweak collective bargaining rights for teachers and it will limit instructional time to 907 hours yearly, a figure Volorney said causes concern for Pembina Hills.
“The limits of instructional time have gone to 907 hours, which is going to be really hard for us to try and make equitable in our smaller and bigger schools,” Volorney explained.
However, Barrhead-Morinville-Westlock MLA Maureen Kubinec did not see the deal as an 11th Hour solution. She was more than satisfied by the news that both local teachers and trustees have accepted the proposed deal.
“I’m very pleased,” Kubinec explained. “That agreement will give us four years of labour peace so that we can continue to do the great work that (teachers) do.
“It’s pretty much all positive in my eyes.”
Although it remains unclear what will happen if the vote isn’t unanimously accepted across the province, the deadline to ratify the deal is May 13.
“So technically, it’s kind of retroactive to this September because we’ve been working with our current collective agreement even though it expired around September,” Kulmatyski explained.
“So, it would result in a collective agreement from Sept. 1 of this year to Aug. 31 of 2016. So it does go retroactive once it’s all signed and sealed.”
