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In a vote of six to two, Wetaskiwin Regional Public Schools chose to withdraw from the School Boards Employer Bargaining Authority (SBEBA) and bargain locally with its teachers.
The decision leaves SBEBA with 11 member school boards, mostly representing smaller rural jurisdictions scattered across the province. Originally, the intent of the creators of SBEBA was to use provisions in the School Act allowing for the formation of regional bargaining authorities to bring school boards together so they could present a united front in negotiations with their corresponding ATA locals.
The decision of Wetaskiwin Regional Public Schools is welcomed by the jurisdiction’s teachers and their local, who see it as an opportunity to have trustees once again take the reins in negotiations with teachers and to arrive at solutions reflecting local needs and realities.
The Alberta Teachers’ Association is opposed to regional bargaining along the lines of the SBEBA model. Not only does this approach further diminish the already eroded autonomy of individual locally elected school boards, but based on historical experiences with school authority associations in the 1980s and 1990s, the model appears to be more likely to delay settlements and generate labour conflict.
In the final days of January 2008, when the vast majority of school boards and teacher bargaining units had reached five-year settlements linked to the unfunded liability of the Teachers’ Pension Plan, five of the last six boards to settle belonged to SBEBA.
Although Wetaskiwin Regional Public Schools has opted for local bargaining, it is not anticipated that substantive negotiations will commence before 2012.
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