After more than 17 weeks in some cases, braving temperatures that dipped into the sub 40s if you don’t count the wind-chill, education workers represented by the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) in Fort McMurray and Edmonton reached settlement agreements yesterday.
The three mediated agreements between negotiators for CUPE’s locals and the Edmonton Public, Fort McMurray Public and Fort McMurray Catholic school districts are expected to set a pattern that will allow the remaining strikes by educational support workers to be quickly resolved, the union indicated in a statement Saturday.
CUPE Alberta President Rory Gill called the agreements a victory over Alberta’s United Conservative Party (UCP). “Danielle Smith set out to crush us and we stood up, fought back, and won,” he said this morning.
The settlements in Fort Mac and Edmonton will end the strikes at the three school districts if they are ratified by the locals’ members. In the meantime, CUPE said, picket lines will come down.
About 1,000 members of CUPE Local 2545 and Local 2559 were on strike in Fort McMurray. They began rotating strikes on November 13 and moved to a full strike soon after. Another approximately 3,000 CUPE 3550 members at the Edmonton Public School District have been on strike since January 13.
If ratified by local members, all three agreements will run until August 2028.
Gill praised the workers’ courage.
“Their fortitude, their determination, and their solidarity won the day,” he said in the union statement. “They finally won the respect they deserve.”
He said in Saturday’s news release that he expects bargaining representatives of another 2,600 support workers on strike against the Calgary, Sturgeon County, Parkland County, Foothills and Black Gold school divisions to quickly return to the bargaining table and achieve settlements. The Black Gold School Division has schools in Beaumont, Calmar, Devon, Leduc, Leduc County, New Sarepta, Thorsby and Warburg.
As is a normal practice in Canadian labour relations, CUPE will not release details of the agreements until the members have seen them. Gill said in the release, however, that “all three deals have wage agreements that are higher than the original wage mandates imposed by the Alberta Government.”
CUPE said the workers in Fort McMurray will vote on the proposed agreement over 24 hours beginning tomorrow. At Edmonton Public Schools the vote will take place today or tomorrow, the union said Saturday.
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