In a bluntly-worded e-mail to Alberta’s school board trustees, Education Minister Jeff Johnson put the province’s teachers on notice with the announcement that contract “negotiations are over” and any incentives previously offered are now “off the table.”
In the e-mail, sent out Friday, March 1, Johnson said Alberta “teachers are already the highest paid among the provinces” and urged school board trustees to keep certain “fiscal realities in mind” as local school boards negotiate with Alberta’s teachers.
Teachers have been without a contract since the end of August 2012. Negotiations with the province broke down in February after the teachers rejected a four-year offer.
Johnson also noted in the e-mail that he is “no longer in position to fund any form of cash incentive for the next four years.”
“Provincial negotiations are over,” he said. “The incentives I offered are off the table. Further be aware that any negotiated deals must include wage freezes for three years and no more than a two per cent increase in the fourth year. Anything else is simply not sustainable for our education system and will not be funded by government.”
Johnson also reminded trustees that it is “critical that all boards work within this framework” and that he has “10 business days to review any potential agreements.”
The stern missive had the teachers’ union accusing the education minister of continuing to interfere with the collective bargaining process and an ongoing attempt at “manufacturing a crisis.”
“He’s trying to make this out to be a much bigger crisis than it needs to be,” said Jonathan Teghtmeyer, spokesman with the Alberta Teachers’ Association. “We have a long history of local bargaining in this province and the vast majority of collective agreements are reached without labour disruption.”
Kim Capstick, press secretary for the minister, said in an e-mail to the Herald that, “Minister Johnson wants to ensure that local boards negotiate agreements that are sustainable and do not divert funding from classroom programs.”
On Friday, Minister Johnson told reporters he foresees labour disruptions in the next two years and warned that some school boards will face job cuts and wage rollbacks without a long-term agreement in place.
Alberta teachers flatly rejected the province’s last labour contract offer in February, which included three years of salary grid freezes, followed by a two per cent increase in the fourth year, as well as a one-time lump sum payment one per cent payment in years three and four.
That means all bargaining on issues, such as workload and compensation, now falls on 62 local school boards at a time when the province is faced with a budget crunch—a fiscal situation the minister of education alluded to in his e-mail to trustees, in which he noted “Albertans ... expect school boards to live within your means.”
That message from the minister was delivered the same day the Calgary Board of Education sent a letter to parents highlighting the dire need for provincial funding to build new schools.
According to the CBE, Calgary’s existing schools already under pressure due to growth, capacity and expectation. In coming years, “our schools are going to become more crowded” and the “only solution is more capacity,” said the CBE.
Although the province has promised 50 new schools and major modernizations across Alberta, that’s not “nearly enough given the need,” said the CBE.
Meanwhile, Teghtmeyer said ATA members are growing tired of the minister’s “clear pattern of interfering” in the bargaining process.
Alberta’s privacy commissioner launched a formal investigation into an e-mail sent by Minister Johnson to more than 30,000 school teachers. His office pulled the e-mail addresses, many of them personal, from a provincial registry that contains a list of every certified teacher in Alberta.
“Our teachers have already been telling us that they are quite concerned about his insistence of getting in the way of local bargaining,” said Teghtmeyer. “We are quite surprised that the minister would take such a confrontational stance with teachers.”
Original Article
Source: calgaryherald.com
Author: trevor howell
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