Students walk out of school to join a protest in support of teachers at the Alberta Legislature in Edmonton, on Sept. 22. Salaries, classroom complexity and class sizes are the three major concerns teachers have, Alberta Teachers’ Association head says.AMBER BRACKEN/The Canadian Press
Teachers in Alberta appear set to walk off the job on Monday, a strike that could affect 700,000 students and their families across the province.
Negotiations between the teachers’ union and the government began more than a year ago, and compensation has been one of the main points of dispute.
Salaries, classroom complexity and class sizes are the three major concerns teachers have, said Jason Schilling, president of the Alberta Teachers’ Association.
Premier Danielle Smith has said that the province’s offer, including a pay raise of 12 per cent over four years, rejected by the union earlier this week, is “very generous.”
The union has proposed a pay increase of 34.5 per cent over four years, Mr. Schilling said, adding that the number is just a starting point.
“The number is going to be somewhere in between. We just have to work out and negotiate where that number would be that will satisfy teachers,” he said.
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The union and the province have both used comparisons of what teachers in other provinces are paid during the negotiations.
But there are a range of other factors that are also considered in these sorts of disputes, including cost of living, a province’s tax regime and the proportion of teachers who live in areas that are more affordable, said Darryl Hunter, a professor of education policy studies at the University of Alberta, and a former civil servant for the governments of Ontario, Saskatchewan and B.C.
Data from Statistics Canada comparing teacher pay across the country shows that salaries for primary- and secondary-school teachers in Alberta are both slightly above national averages.
But that data is from 2022-2023.
Since then, teachers in several provinces, including Ontario, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, have signed new contracts with wage increases.
In Saskatchewan, a teacher with 10 years of experience at the highest end of the pay grid makes $111,501 a year.
In Ontario, the median salary for a secondary-school teacher is $100,000. A teacher with 10 years of experience at the highest level of the salary grid can be paid $119,925 a year.
When it comes to Manitoba, a teacher in Winnipeg at the highest level of the grid this year will make a salary of $123,540, according to the Winnipeg Teachers’ Association.
In B.C., a teacher at the Surrey District School Board with 10 years’ experience at the highest end of the pay grid earns a salary of $109,520.
Alberta says its offer of a 12-per-cent pay hike over four years would make teachers the highest paid in Western Canada.
Education Minister Demetrios Nicolaides has said that, when other adjustments are factored in, a first-year teacher would earn approximately $70,000, while a teacher at the high end with a decade’s worth of experience would earn approximately $114,000.
The assertion that the province’s offer would make Alberta teachers the highest paid in Western Canada is misleading, Mr. Schilling said.
For example, teachers in B.C. are currently negotiating a new collective agreement, which could result in higher pay increases.
The 34.5-per-cent figure that the teachers’ union is using as a starting point is based on years of salaries not keeping up with the rate of inflation, among other factors, Mr. Schilling said.
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“We’d have to go back to 2010 to see when teachers were above inflation in terms of their purchasing power,” he said.
According to Prof. Hunter, these sorts of issues are almost always central to bargaining between teachers and provinces.
“Inflation, cost of living, those are always considerations, both for the government side and the teachers’ side,” he said, adding that the cost-of-living differences for teachers throughout a province must also be considered.
Teachers living in Edmonton or Calgary, for example, will usually have a much higher cost of living than teachers in rural areas of the province, primarily owing to housing costs, Prof. Hunter said.
The teacher shortage across Alberta must also be a factor when it comes to wages, Mr. Schilling said. “A good, competitive salary that recognizes the fact that we need teachers is important.”
The same goes for retention issues, he said.
Right now, approximately 16,900 of the province’s 51,000 public, Catholic and francophone teachers are at the top of the pay grid, he said.
“That tells you how young the profession is right now. We need to ensure that those teachers stay in the system.”