Provincial ATA too powerful at bargaining table – give school boards same strength, says ASBA
Release date: December 12, 2005
The government must create an employer bargaining association for school boards
to end the imbalance that
plagues the current model for negotiating contracts between school boards and
teachers, said Alberta School
Boards Association President Maureen Kubinec.
Commenting after the Alberta Teacher’s
Association’s December 12
presentation to the Standing Policy
Committee on Education and Employment, Kubinec said: “Alberta’s
Commission on Learning
recommended the government establish an employer bargaining association for
school boards. The ASBA
recommends setting up an employer bargaining association. It’s time for
the government to write the
legislation to create this new body. We urge the minister of education to move
forward on this initiative
soon.”
Kubinec said the current system is unbalanced because a single
provincial teachers’ union – the
ATA – deals
with 62 individual school boards, one board at a time. “School boards
are outgunned. Bargaining as
individuals, school boards do not have an effective mechanism for providing
a unified bargaining approach.
You get the scenario where the provincial ATA comes to an individual school
board and says ‘Hey your
neighbor board gave 3 per cent or 4 per cent – why don’t you?’ School
boards face this pressure regardless
of whether that board has the money to meet the demand or if they’ve
committed money to another priority
in the jurisdiction, ” said Kubinec.
“Creating an employers bargaining
association for school boards will strengthen school boards’ ability
to
bargain with teachers as a group on a province-wide basis and to match the
mandate of the ATA,” said
Kubinec.
She warned that without an employer bargaining association for school
boards, the imbalance will continue,
pointing to 2004-2005 settlements which saw funding to school boards increase
by 2 per cent while, on
average, teacher salaries increased by 2.81 per cent and expenditures for
health plans for teachers increased on
average by 5.4 per cent.
Details about the ASBA proposal
For more information contact: , ASBA President at 1.780.349.1229 or 1.780.349.6122.
The Alberta School Boards Association serves and represents all Alberta’s public, separate and francophone school boards.
