Red Deer Catholic teachers have voted overwhelmingly in favour of authorizing a strike vote.
At a Feb. 15 meeting attended by about three-quarters of members, more than 99 per cent of attendees voted in favour of authorizing the Alberta Teachers’ Association to hold a strike vote. The result sends a strong and clear message to school board bargainers to return to negotiations and to move off of their contract-stripping proposal, said local president Sara Lambert.
“Teachers are clearly upset with their employer right now,” Lambert said. “They are incensed that the board’s only proposal in bargaining so far would strip away longstanding provisions from the collective agreement and they are demanding to be treated with respect.”
Only five of 61 school boards in the province have not settled for the current term of bargaining, which extends back to September of 2020. Lambert says teachers are looking for improvements on issues related to substitute teachers and school administrators. The solutions being proposed are low cost and consistent with provisions that exist in most teacher agreements elsewhere.
“The board wants to strip out professional development provisions and remove up to 20 members from the agreement. They have made negotiations adversarial and antagonizing when a deal could easily be reached,” Lambert said. “This is about fairness and respect, and right now it looks like the board has neither to offer to its teachers.”
Teacher negotiators have told the board it needs to return to bargaining with an intent to listen and to move toward a settlement or they will ask the mediator to initiate the two-week cooling off period. After those two weeks lapse, the ATA would be in a position to hold a vote of members to go on strike.
The Red Deer Catholic School Division employs approximately 700 contracted and substitute teachers in Catholic schools in Red Deer, Blackfalds, Sylvan Lake, Rocky Mountain House, Innisfail and Olds.
Collective bargaining for teachers in Alberta is a two-phase process where matters of significant cost and broad impact are negotiated at a central table, followed by local negotiations between individual school divisions and ATA bargaining units on other, more locally specific, matters. ❚
