Edmonton education staff rally at Alberta legislature for ‘Education Day of Action’

More than 200 Edmonton acquisition unit gathered astatine the Alberta legislature grounds Saturday rallying for wage increases and suitable moving conditions.

Contract negotiations are underway for CUPE 3550, the national representing Edmonton’s acquisition assistants, medication unit and librarians.

Leeanne Cole-Fandrich has been an acquisition adjunct with Edmonton Public Schools for 23 years. She says it’s been challenging for her to enactment students erstwhile classrooms are overcrowded and resources are scarce.

“We’re trying to support these kids focused and connected task and doing what they tin to their quality but there’s not capable of us,” she said. “We tally each implicit the school, bash galore antithetic jobs and I don’t deliberation radical who aren’t successful acquisition truly recognize what we do.”

Cole-Fandrich says she often has to skip breaks and is pulled successful aggregate directions to enactment students successful 3 oregon 4 antithetic classrooms astatine once.

She believes she’s severely underpaid for her enactment of work. She says galore of her colleagues are often moving a 2nd oregon 3rd occupation to wage for basal necessities.

“I could enactment operation (for amended pay). I enactment operation successful the summer. I mean, fractional of america person 2 jobs during the schoolhouse year,” she said.

The president of CUPE 3550 Mandy Lamoureux says portion salaries vary, the mean yearly wage for galore of her members sits astatine astir $27,000.

Lamoureux says the province’s mandated 2.75 per cent wage summation is not capable with inflationary pressures.

“We’re worthy much than that. They’ve mandated astatine 2.75 per cent with wage increase, which totals astir 70 cents, and we’re worthy much than that,” Lamoureux said.

“The minimum wage has gone up by $4.40 and we haven’t adjacent kept up with that. We should person a liveable wage. We should beryllium capable to enactment astatine 1 occupation and beryllium capable to spend each the necessities to unrecorded successful Edmonton,” she added.

The national fears the state whitethorn artifact their enactment to onslaught pursuing involution earlier this week with CUPE 2545 workers successful Fort McMurray schools.

Educational assistants, librarians and different enactment unit astatine nationalist and christianity schoolhouse divisions served announcement connected Sept. 17 to statesman onslaught action. The Alberta authorities intervened and appointed them to 2 quality enquiry boards earlier the onslaught started. If agreements can’t beryllium reached the enquiry boards volition marque recommendations connected a settlement.

“I would emotion the authorities to halt impeding connected our rights to bargain. They person nary concern being astatine our bargaining array and mandating 2.75. Let america negociate with our schoolhouse committee the mode we merit to negociate with our schoolhouse board,” Lamoureux said.

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In a televised code Tuesday night, Premier Danielle Smith said the Alberta government will beryllium quadrupling the magnitude of superior wealth going towards K-12 schoolhouse operation implicit the adjacent 3 years via a caller programme called the School Construction Accelerator Program.

The state says they’ll request to unfastened 200,000 caller pupil spaces successful the adjacent 7 years to support up with enrolment pressure. Their extremity is to unfastened the archetypal 50,000 spaces by the 2026-2027 schoolhouse year.

“We estimation that (enrollment) is expanding astatine astir 33,000 students per twelvemonth – that is equivalent to astir 35 caller schools each year,” Smith said successful her address.

The national questions the implementation of that project.

“We deliberation it’s fantastic they’re going to physique caller schoolhouse but astatine the aforesaid time, we’re a small nervous. How are you going to unit them if you can’t unit the ones we person now?” Lamoureux said.

An acquisition spokesperson with the Ministry of Education responded to CUPE’s concerns with the pursuing statement:

“Our authorities is making grounds investments into education, including billions to code enrollment maturation and schoolroom complexity by hiring much than 3,000 caller teachers, EAs and different acquisition enactment unit and to enactment students with specialized learning needs.

“To beryllium clear, the Government of Alberta does not bargain with CUPE, and your assertion that the authorities does not attraction for the employees employed by the state is wholly inaccurate. We promote some the national and the schoolhouse divisions to enactment constructively with the mediator towards agreements to forestall disruptions to acquisition and childcare successful Fort McMurray,” the connection said.