EDMONTON, Alberta — Over 6,600 school workers, members of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, are on strike across Alberta for higher wages. The workers include educational assistants, cafeteria workers, librarians, administrative office workers and custodians.
“Many of us have to work two jobs to make ends meet,” Donna Keith, an education assistant, told the Militant on the picket line in Leduc, a suburb here March 3. She’s paid 23.97 Canadian dollars ($16.54) an hour, only CA$5.13 more than when she started 25 years ago.
“We’ve had support from union members from the Alberta Union of Public Employees, postal workers, Carpenters Local 135, Teamsters, the Alberta Federation of Labour and Alberta nurses,” Keith said.
Boilermakers bring coffee every morning and the public employees union organized a barbecue for strikers. The AFL has launched an adopt-a-striker program to boost payments that workers get from their union.
School doors remain open. Some school boards are pressing substitute teachers and interns to do the work of the strikers.
Temperatures on the picket line plummeted to -41 degrees Fahrenheit recently. “They tried to freeze us out, but it didn’t work,” said education assistant Jen Tribiger, “and now they are trying to starve us out.”
“We’ve come too far to turn back now,” several strikers said.
The workers have gone four years without a contract. School boards offered 13.5% over eight years from 2020 to 2028. The union is demanding an immediate increase of CA$1.25 an hour and 4.5% each year of a four-year contract.
The workers, the big majority women, are picketing Monday to Friday.
Shelly Michaluk, who has worked as an educational assistant at the Redwater High School in a rural area north of Edmonton, said she last got a raise in 2015. The wages in her district are $5 an hour behind those in the provincial capital. “Over the last five years the school board gave themselves a raise of 50%,” she said.
The strike began in November in Fort McMurray, in northern Alberta, extended to Edmonton Jan. 13, and has spread to other regions. Hundreds of strikers rallied at the Alberta legislature in Edmonton Feb. 27. Support for the strikers among working people continues to grow.
“Ten years is too long not to have a wage increase with the rising cost of living,” Susan Rowland, a housewife, told these Militant correspondents when we knocked on her door here.