Alberta teachers vote 95% in favour of proceeding with strike

Alberta teachers are one step closer to walking off the job after voting overwhelmingly in favour of strike action.

Nearly 95 per cent of the 38,997 votes cast were in favour of hitting the picket lines, the Alberta Teachers’ Association (ATA) revealed Tuesday afternoon.

“Teachers have just indicated they’ve had enough,” ATA president Jason Schilling told reporters. “They have been asked to do more with less. Every single year we have been the least funded school jurisdiction in Canada for well over a decade, and we’re seeing implications of that in our classroom right now.”

The teachers, who voted from June 5 to 8, now have 120 days to initiate job action if an agreement is not reached during negotiations with the province. A 72-hour notice would have to be issued before educators go on strike.

Schilling would not give any indication of when a potential strike would happen, explaining the ATA’s provincial executive council (PEC), the association’s governing body, is scheduled to meet Thursday and Friday to “determine the next steps.”

The main points of contention among teachers in the province are crowded classrooms and a lack of wage increases, the ATA says.

“By failing to fund our schools properly, this government has chosen to shortchange the future of our students,” Schilling said. “Teachers want every student to thrive, but in overcrowded, under supported classrooms, students are not getting the one-on-one attention they deserve, and my colleagues do not have the tools they need to do their jobs properly, and they’re burning out under the weight of these impossible expectations.”

Schilling says the vote sends a strong message to the Alberta government “that teachers are concerned about the state of public education right now, the fact that they can’t meet their students’ needs, and the fact that they need to be able to make a living that attracts people to the profession, because we’re also seeing a teacher retention and recruitment issue.”

The ATA president acknowledged some Alberta parents would be frustrated if school is interrupted — especially after the lengthy educational assistants’ strike earlier this year — but he hopes they will be understanding.

“I empathize with them, but they also need to know that this is being done to support their students, their kids that are coming to our schools,” Schilling said. “Teachers have been highlighting for years now the lack of resources, the overcrowded classrooms, the inability for us to meet their students’ needs, which are, you know, parents are bringing their most precious items to us at school. So this is being done, and we’re moving forward on this to ultimately support kids.

“And I would hope that parents would support teachers as they’re going down this path to make sure that we have the resources for kids at school.”

Negotiations between both sides went to mediation in January, with the mediator releasing a set of recommended terms for a settlement that needed to be approved by both sides.

In early May, 62 per cent of teachers voted “no” to the mediator’s recommendation for a new collective agreement.

In a statement Tuesday, Alberta Finance Minister Nate Horner said that recommendation included “the same 12 per cent over four years general wage increase that has already been accepted by other unions and their members.”

Horner says that recommendation also included a grid harmonization that would have meant a further five per cent wage increase for some teachers; increases between three and six per cent in northern incentives; market adjustments for substitute teachers; and more than $400 million in classroom improvements starting in the fall.

Schilling says ultimately, Alberta teachers want a deal to be negotiated.

“I mean, nobody necessarily wants to go on strike,” he said. “This is not something that we necessarily want to do. But we’ll move forward with that if we find that we’re unable to get to a negotiated settlement that meets our needs.”

–With files from CityNews Calgary