Parkland, Black Gold school support workers vote to strike

Five more groups of school support staff have voted in favour of strike action. Amanda Anderson has the latest.

Support workers in two more Edmonton-area school divisions have voted to strike.

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CUPE Locals 3484 and 5543, representing education assistants, librarians, secretarial staff and others in the Black Gold and Parkland school divisions, are two of five unions across the province that most recently voted to take job action.

The other three are located in Calgary or nearby.

Altogether, the five unions represent about 2,000 workers.

“They’ve sent a clear message to this province that education matters, education needs to be properly resourced, and they’re ready to take action to make sure that happens,” said CUPE Alberta president Rory Gill in an interview Wednesday morning, adding job action by 6,000 members could be the largest CUPE has seen in several decades.

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The union says the province has limited pay increases, challenging the ability of locals to bargain for livable wages and left some school districts with job vacancy rates near 10 per cent. The average educational support worker earns $34,500.

“They hide behind the school boards but everyone in Alberta knows 100 per cent of public education funding comes from the province. They set what the funding is and this government, through the creation of the Provincial Bargaining Compensation Office, has set secret mandates,” Gill said.

“So this dispute is with the province 100 per cent. They can say whatever they want, but we know that it is the province that is blocking deals and keeping our members on the picket lines rather than in the schools where they should be.”

In a statement, Alberta’s ministers of education and finance repeated their accusation that national CUPE leaders are interfering in the Alberta school negotiations.

Black Gold workers – whose division spans from Warburg west of Edmonton to Beaumont east of Edmonton – voted 95 per cent in favour of job action.

Parkland workers – whose division spans from Evansburg to Spruce Grove west of Edmonton – voted 91 per cent in favour of job action.

The strike votes are unofficial until the Alberta Labour Relations Board validates them and CUPE will provide 72 hours of notice to the school divisions before any job action takes place.

Both divisions confirmed on Wednesday they had not yet received any notice and told CTV News Edmonton they were committed to the bargaining process.

Negotiations were scheduled to resume for Parkland School Division on Feb. 20 and 21 and for Black Gold School Division on Feb. 25.

About 4,000 support workers in the Edmonton region and Fort McMurray have been on strike since early January.

Some of those workers, including educational assistant and CUPE 3550 member Subrena Porter, dedicated their job action Wednesday morning to the five locals that just voted to strike.

“It’s great. We need more people to join us because this job does great things for kids but it doesn’t pay enough and it’s not fair that I have kids at home (and) I can’t pay for things for them because my job takes all my time and my energy and doesn’t pay enough,” Porter said from the picket line at 104 Street and 108 Avenue, the entrance to the Victoria School of the Arts and Centre for Education.

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With files from CTV News Edmonton’s Nicole Lampa and Amanda Anderson