The union representing Alberta’s 51,000 teachers says they’re planning to walk off the job starting Oct. 6.
With contract talks at a stalemate, Jason Schilling from the Alberta Teachers’ Association says it’s time for Premier Danielle Smith’s government to step up.
“What teachers want is simple: classrooms that are properly funded, respect for the work that they do, and wages that reflect their value to Alberta’s future,” Schilling told a news conference Wednesday.
“Teachers’ patience has run out.”
The move comes more than a week after talks broke down between the union and the province, with the main issues being wages and working conditions.
Finance Minister Nate Horner has said the government has offered wage hikes of 12 per cent over four years, with a promise to hire some 3,000 more teachers.
Schilling has said teachers have only seen a 5.75 per cent salary increase over the last decade and that it doesn’t even keep up with inflation.
The union has long pointed to national statistics suggesting Alberta’s per-student funding is among the lowest in Canada.
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Earlier this week, Schilling urged parents to press the government to act.
“They need to ask them why this seems to be acceptable to government,” he said.
“Why do we find ourselves in a situation where 40 seems to be the new norm for class sizes in many schools across this province?”
Horner has said the government is in a new kind of squeeze, facing down a deficit projected to hit $6.5 billion, and despite that, has put up a deal for teachers worth $2.3 billion.
“The big change since April — the first deal — is the deteriorating fiscal position of the province,” Horner said earlier this week in an interview.
He said there’s a good reason for slight increases to teacher pay in Alberta over the last 15 years: they were paid “above market” when those conversations first began.
“We needed to align ourselves more closely with the comparator provinces. Alberta can’t afford to be an outlier in that way, so we feel that this deal addresses that catch-up and places us strongly in market,” he said.
“We think this is a fair deal. We think this is a good deal.”
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