The Alberta Teachers’ Association

Creating the Conditions for the Best Professional Practice is a series of articles by the Teacher Welfare (TW) program area of the Alberta Teachers’ Association (ATA). Previous articles published in the ATA News have been posted to the ATA’s website (www.teachers.ab.ca).

With collective agreements across the province now expired as of August 31, 2012, the ATA and school boards are actively bargaining to reach memoranda of agreement to be ratified by teachers and that will form new collective agreements. At the same time, the Alberta government, the Association and the Alberta School Boards Association (ASBA) have committed to meet during September and October to come to a tripartite agreement that will establish a framework to be incorporated into local memoranda of agreement and, upon ratification, new collective bargaining agreements.

A legitimate question arising from these separate talks and processes is, How do tripartite discussions affect bargaining between local school boards and the ATA?

In a jointly issued letter dated July 24, 2012, the government, the ATA and the ASBA agreed that the tripartite discussions would focus on five major areas:

1. Term of the agreement
2. Teacher compensation for the term of the agreement
3. Teacher workload
4. A dispute-resolution process should bargaining between local school boards and the ATA reach an impasse
5. Other proposals that have significant financial impact on school boards

Bargaining talks between local boards and the ATA are restricted to items in the parties’ initial proposals that are not incorporated in the list above. Collective bargaining is active in most local school jurisdictions. Local school boards and teacher negotiating subcommittees (NSCs) are reaching agreement on items not included in the list. Since no formal bargaining has taken place for five years, there are plenty of items to discuss aside from the five listed.  

The government, the ATA and the ASBA are committed to concluding the talks in the hopes of attaining a tentative agreement by October 31, 2012. Should the tripartite talks be successful in yielding a tentative agreement, this framework will be incorporated into local collective agreements with items negotiated locally by August 31, 2013. However, if the tripartite talks are unsuccessful, local bargaining will proceed as defined by the Alberta Labour Relations Code.

Teachers are advised to stay informed about the talks by reading bargaining updates provided by their NSCs.