Why is Your Educational Assistant on Strike? Ask the UCP

This article was originally published in the Edmonton Journal on March 10, 2025.

Education support workers across Edmonton and Fort McMurray have been on strike for almost two months. They have been joined in recent days by workers in Calgary and several other communities. On the surface, the workers are bargaining with the school boards that employ them. In practice, however, the provincial government is calling the shots — but doing so in secret.

While the cost of living soars, these workers have seen their wages frozen — some for five years, others for a staggering 10 years, depending on the school board. Since 2020, expenses have climbed by 17.5%, leaving these workers, many of whom earn less than $40,000 per year, struggling to keep up. Wage negotiations are stalled, with most employer offers failing to make up for the past years of inflation and barely covering inflation going forward.

These strikes are causing significant disruption for hundreds of thousands of Alberta families, placing greater strain on teachers and principals, and negatively impacting the quality of education kids receive. It is in everyone’s interest that these disputes get settled so these important workers can get back to doing their jobs.

So why aren’t things getting settled? Ask the UCP government.

There are two things the provincial government is doing that are preventing timely settlements. First, they are not providing sufficient funding to school boards to pay these workers a fair wage. Second, the government is dictating what school boards can offer in negotiations — stripping boards of their autonomy and throwing a huge wrench into bargaining.

As we outlined in our report for the Parkland Institute, A Thumb on the Scale, over the past few years, provincial government interference in public sector bargaining has reached unprecedented levels. Empowered by the Public Sector Employers Act (PSEA) introduced by the UCP in 2019, the provincial government imposes bargaining mandates on all public sector employers and requires the employer to keep those mandates confidential now and into the future — secret from workers, their unions, and the public.

These secret mandates have significantly delayed and prevented settlements, seriously undermined bargaining relationships, and, in the cases of school boards, undercut elected trustees. As school board trustees are forced to implement the secret UCP mandate, education support workers cannot get a fair deal because the government has set unreasonable wage limits.

We are now seeing the same pattern that played out in 2020, when government interference derailed negotiations and made mediation necessary for public-sector workers across health care, education, post-secondary, and the core public service. Fast-forward to 2025, and nearly 250,000 public sector workers are stuck in stalled negotiations that have dragged on for months. So far, employers have either refused to discuss wages or have proposed a lowball offer of 7.5% over four years, which falls far short of covering the cost of living. It is noteworthy that every employer who has been willing to bargain wages has proposed the exact same wage offer, a telling indication of across-the-board government interference.

What is worse is that all of this interference happens behind the cloak of secrecy. The finance minister can publicly deny there is a mandate, and no one can contradict him due to the risk of penalties under the PSEA for disclosing the secret mandate now or in the future.

Even if the government decided to waive the mandate for school boards, Alberta’s 2025 Budget has no new additional money for school boards to finance pay increases, so boards wouldn’t have the funds to pay for it. Government action puts school boards between a secret mandate rock and a budgetary shortfall hard place.

Since the beginning of the strikes, two Edmonton public school trustees have resigned, both citing government “intimidation tactics” that undermine their authority and autonomy. How many other public sector administrators are feeling frustrated at their inability to find solutions with their workers because of the heavy hand of the government?

Danielle Smith and her government can resolve the education support workers' strikes today. They can also restart bargaining for hundreds of thousands of public sector workers. All they have to do is remove the mandate, let the parties bargain freely, and recognize those agreements by ensuring adequate funding to pay for them.

And everyone can get back to work.

 

Photo by Erin Rolfson, CUPE Alberta.