Education Support Workers across the province have finally won their months-long struggle with the government to improve their working conditions. Employees, many who have been on strike since early January, will finally start seeing money flow back into their bank accounts again. They’ll be able to go back to work, and be reunited with their students.
Over 6,000 ESWs across eight school divisions have striked over the past few months. ESWs in Fort McMurray began a rolling strike in mid-November, and by January 7 they had walked off the job. In the following weeks, employees at the other seven school divisions joined them.
For many, the strike lasted 45 days.
“I’m in awe of the workers in Edmonton and Fort McMurray who stood their ground, in weather as cold as minus 51 degrees, to win a fair contract,” said Rory Gill, the president of the union representing the workers. “Their fortitude, their determination, and their solidarity won the day.”
ESWs have been fighting for a living wage. Their average salary is $34,500. They’ve not had a raise in ten years.
The strike was a bitter fight. At the outset, Finance Minister Nate Horner claimed that ESWs work part-time jobs. On February 7, the CBC reported that Mandy Lamoreux, who was negotiating on behalf of workers, walked away from the negotiation table because the offer was so bad.
According to the report “A Thumb on the Scale” published by the Parkland Institute, the Alberta government has been interfering with public bargaining, making it impossible for employers to reach fair deals with their staff.
Jason Foster, Bob Barnetson, and Susan Cake, the report’s authors, wrote in an opinion article for the Edmonton Journal that this was exactly the problem with the ESW strike.
“First, they are not providing sufficient funding to school boards to pay these workers a fair wage. Second, the government is dictating what school boards can offer in negotiations — stripping boards of their autonomy and throwing a huge wrench into bargaining,” they wrote.
Still, it appears that the thousands of ESWs that have striked over the past two months have proven that they’re more powerful than the government. They’ve moved the needle. They’ve gotten the majority of the public to support their strike. They’ve pushed the government and their school boards to give them a better deal.
How They Won
That ESWs would remain strong and win the strike was not a given.
TheRockies.Life interviewed two ESWs to understand how the strike went, and how those on strike managed to stay strong.
Christine and Charanjeet are both Educational Assistants with the EPSB.
Christine has held her role for the past 35 years. Early on in her career, she participated in the union’s first strike, and stood on the picket line for a month.
Charanjeet worked as an Educational Assistant for only a week before the strike broke out. She’d completed an internship and had only just entered the profession.
Still, their stories of the past nine weeks were strikingly similar.
At first, Christine was excited to go on strike. “We’re going to get things done. We’re going to be recognized,” she told TheRockies.Life.
A month in, Christine was physically and emotionally exhausted. The reality of how much the government and the school board were against giving ESWs a fair deal became clearer and clearer every day.
Members of the union don’t put aside strike pay, so she and her colleagues didn’t receive a paycheck in over two months. It was the depth of winter, and the wind whipped. The temperature rose several times, taunting the strikers with dreams of spring, only to slam back down to -30. And still, no deal came.
“I had to dig deep to make sure that I was taking care of myself,” she says of the last few weeks of the strike.
She told TheRockies.Life that she was striking for future generations.
When she started her career, the school board cared for her. She had a job that she could be proud of. She said that she wanted to make sure that the government and school board gave ESWs a living wage so that those who come after her can say the same thing about their job.
Hope is A Woman With A Smile
Charanjeet was hopeful at the outset of the strike. She expected she and her colleagues would be on the picket line for two, maybe three weeks.
“By the fourth week, we had lost hope. Our emotions took a great dive,” she said.
She had to dig deep within herself to find the will to continue striking.
“As the days went on I realized it’s just not the numbers that we were fighting for. It was our dignity at stake,” says Charanjeet.
She spoke of the people she saw everyday on the picket line who lifted her spirits. A man who walked up and down the line day in and day out with a flag. A woman who greeted everyone individually with a smile every morning. A family who came by regularly with hot food for the strikers. It was these moments that kept her going.
At that point, she says, “It wasn’t a strike anymore. It was a movement, and I was with a family of people who were standing up for something bigger than themselves.”
Both Christine and Charanjeet are eager to get back to the classroom and to be with their students again. They wonder, though, whether their students will feel they were abandoned, and they think it will take some time to build trust with them again.
Still, both said that their determination to be there for their students only increased over the course of the strike. “The strike has made us even more committed to the work we do and more committed to each other as well,” says Charanjeet.
