{"id":485324,"date":"2026-02-19T13:00:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-19T13:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/485324\/"},"modified":"2026-02-19T13:00:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-19T13:00:08","slug":"edmonton-catholic-school-workers-have-new-contract","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/485324\/","title":{"rendered":"Edmonton Catholic school workers have new contract"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week, the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees published an update<\/a> regarding contract negotiations for education workers in Edmonton.<\/p>\n

AUPE represents over 350 education support workers employed by the Edmonton Catholic Separate School Division.<\/p>\n

These workers fill a wide variety of positions, including custodians, mechanics, carpenters, electricians, locksmiths, painters, plumbers, vehicle operators, storepersons, and those working in maintenance, cafeterias, and the warehouse.<\/p>\n

According to the update<\/a>, workers recently ratified their tentative agreement.<\/p>\n

Their last agreement<\/a> for these workers expired in August 2024, about 1.5 years ago. That agreement took two years to ratify, following the expiration of the previous agreement.<\/p>\n

The recently ratified agreement has several improvements, including wage increases in every year of the 4-year contract.<\/p>\n

1 September 20243.00%1 September 20253.00%1 September 20263.00%1 September 20273.00%<\/p>\n

Keep in mind that the 2025 and 2027 raises are a minimum of 3%. They could also be $1.25 an hour, if that is higher than what a 3% increases would be.<\/p>\n

This is better than what they got in their last agreement:<\/p>\n

1 September 20200.00%1 September 20210.00%1 September 20220.00%1 June 20231.25%1 February 20241.50%<\/p>\n

In the collective agreement prior to that, they got two years of wage freezes and a 2% increase, with half coming in January 2019 and the other half in September 2019.<\/p>\n

To add it all up, that is 4.75% between 1 September 2016 and 1 September 2024.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, during that same period, the consumer price index in Alberta<\/a> increased 33.9 points, from 135.3 points to 169.2 points. That is a jump of 25.06%.<\/p>\n

Since their combined raise over the last two contracts was only 4.75% but inflation was over 25%, these workers were left with a cut to real wages of 20.31% heading into negotiations.<\/p>\n

A 12% increase in their new agreement falls short of helping these workers catch up to the increased cost of living, especially if you consider that it is spread out over 4 years, which means another 4 years of inflation.<\/p>\n

Here are some more changes from the ratified agreement<\/a>.<\/p>\n

National Day for Truth and Reconciliation will now be recognized as a named holiday.<\/p>\n

Paid family medical leave has increased from 1 day per year to 2 days per year. Unpaid leave remains at 3 days.<\/p>\n

Dental benefits under the previous agreement followed the 2009 dental fee guide. They will now follow the most recent fee guide.<\/p>\n

Massage therapy coverages has increased from $100 per year to $500 per year.<\/p>\n

The flexible spending account increased from $600 per year to $700 per year.<\/p>\n

The footwear and clothing benefit increased from $300 every other year to $400 every other year.<\/p>\n

Workers compensations top-up has increased from 90% to 100%.<\/p>\n

In the case of disciplinary action, the employer will provide 24 hours of notice for any pending investigations, which previously had been just \u201creasonable advance\u201d notice.<\/p>\n

Under the previous agreement, any maintenance work with a value of $20,000 or less would, where possible, be assigned to bargaining unit members. That has increased to $25,000 or less.<\/p>\n

Of those participated in the ratification vote, 99.3% approved the tentative agreement.<\/p>\n

\tSupport independent journalism<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last week, the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees published an update regarding contract negotiations for education workers in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":485325,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194294],"tags":[49,48,23752],"class_list":["post-485324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-edmonton","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-edmonton"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=485324"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485324\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/485325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=485324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=485324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=485324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}