EDMONTON – The Alberta Teachers’ Association has unanimously rejected an offer from the province to settle teacher collective agreements for four years.
President Carol Henderson says the government’s offer would have paid teachers less than an offer the union rejected in December.
She says it also failed to include limits on how much time teachers have to work.
“What provisions there are for limiting the amount of time teachers are in the classroom are so full of loopholes that you can drive a school bus through them,” she adds.
“Teachers have to prepare for larger, more complex classes and need time to improve their teaching and student learning,” says Henderson. “There is nothing in the offer that would improve teaching and learning, and very little otherwise to compel teachers to accept.”
Henderson says a letter from Education Minister Jeff Johnson also contained what she called a threat to cut salaries and teaching jobs if teachers reject his offer.
She says teachers do not respond to ultimatums.
The association represents 42,000 school teachers in 62 public boards across the province.
The four-year agreement, presented to the ATA and the Alberta School Boards Association earlier this month, would have seen salaries for nearly 35,000 Alberta teachers frozen for three years, followed by an increase of two per cent in 2015-16.
The province says the average Alberta teacher with 10 years’ experience makes more than $92,000 per year, the highest among all Canadian provinces. It says over the past decade, the average salary of teachers with at least 10 years’ experience has increased by 41 per cent from $65,203 in 2001-02 to $92,201 in 2011-12.
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