AFL says it’s time to put the blame for education strikes where it belongs: on the UCP

EDMONTON – Frustrated or annoyed by school board strikes in Edmonton, Fort McMurray, or Sturgeon County? Blame the UCP.

That’s the message from Gil McGowan, president of Alberta’s largest worker advocacy group, the Alberta Federation of Labour (AFL).

“UCP MLAs and minsters have been trying to convince Albertans that these are disputes between workers and school boards and that the UCP government has nothing to do with them,” says McGowan. “Don’t believe a word of it. These are strikes that didn’t have to happen. It’s the UCP’s fault, full stop.”

McGowan points out that support staff in school boards around the province have gone without pay increases for as long as ten years and that education assistants who provide critical support for our most vulnerable students earn an average of only about $30,000 a year.

He also points out that the main reason school boards have been unable to give these workers fair raises is because, on a per pupil basis, the UCP has been funding K-12 education at the lowest level in the country.

The UCP government has also passed legislation giving themselves the power to impose secret bargaining mandates on school boards – in essence prohibiting those boards from even offering wage increases that keep up with inflation.

“The provincial government holds the purse strings and has created a legal environment in which they have all of the control,” says McGowan. “So, if you’re annoyed or frustrated with the strikes, you should take it up with the UCP MLAs and the UCP cabinet ministers. We can’t let them avoid responsibility for the mess they’ve made.”

McGowan concludes by saying that the quality of our education system is being compromised by the UCP’s refusal to increase per pupil funding at least to the national average and their ham-handed efforts to force education workers to swallow clearly unfair and unacceptable provinces.

“What they’re calling fiscal responsibility is really fiscal irresponsibility,” says McGowan. “Their refusal to adequately fund the system is making it impossible to attract and retain critical staff and it’s threatening the quality of education in Alberta. The situation is even more galling when you consider that the UCP is recording multi-billion-dollar surpluses and increasing handouts to profitable oil and gas companies while, at the same time, telling education assistants that they’re greedy for asking for wages that would lift them out of poverty. It’s time for Albertans to demand better from their government.”

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MEDIA CONTACT:
Leah Hall
Acting Communications Departmental Staff, AFL
Email: lhall@afl.org