Alberta budget plan must include improvements for direct government employees, AUPE president says
EDMONTON – The plan set out in last week’s Budget Speech to address Alberta’s growth with “significant investments” must include investment in the province’s 21,000 direct employees, their union president said as their bargaining team prepares for negotiations.
“Direct employees of the government experience the pressure of Alberta’s economic and population growth every day at work, in the form of heavy workloads and understaffing, and at home, in the form of dramatically higher costs for housing, rent, heat, power and food,” said Alberta Union of Provincial Employees President Doug Knight.
“Their next collective agreement must include significant improvements in pay and benefits for AUPE members,” stated Knight, who is Chair of the union’s General Services Bargaining Committee (GSBC).
“The government cannot argue that it does not have the resources it needs to pay AUPE’s members what they deserve,” he said.
In addition, Knight said, “the agreement we reach must reflect the very high cost of living and working in some parts of Alberta, and must include market adjustments to retain employees in a number of occupations that are in demand in our booming economy.”
As the Budget Speech was delivered on Thursday, GSBC members were meeting at AUPE Headquarters in Edmonton to prepare for their next round of bargaining with the provincial government, which is expected to commence early this summer.
Members of the GSBC represent each of AUPE’s nine direct-government-employees’ locals in the negotiations. They met Thursday and Friday last week to review key bargaining issues brought forward by local representatives at a Jan. 25-26, 2006, conference in Red Deer.
GSBC members met for the same purpose on March 21 and 22, and the committee will meet again May 7-9 and May 30-31 to complete preparations for bargaining.
AUPE expects to formally serve the government with notice to commence bargaining in May.
In the negotiations with the government, AUPE will operate from the assumption that existing economic conditions will continue for five years or more, said AUPE Staff Negotiator Jim Petrie, who will advise the GSBC throughout the negotiations.
Petrie noted that despite significant population growth, there has been no substantial increase in the numbers of government employees for a decade, a development that must be addressed as an economic boom that dwarfs the boom of the 1980s continues to attract new residents to Alberta.
“AUPE’s members directly employed by the province co-operated with the employer’s needs when times were bad not long ago, taking a pay cut that put them significantly behind, suffering layoffs and privatization, and seeing their workloads significantly increase,” Petrie said.
“Now they expect a collective agreement that recognizes their past sacrifices and that will help them cope with the rising costs of living and working in Alberta,” he concluded.
AUPE’s Master Agreement and nine Subsidiary Agreements with the provincial government expire on Aug. 31, 2007.
For more information, contact:
Doug Knight, President, AUPE, 780-930-3301 or 780-265-6655 (cellular phone)
Jim Petrie, Union Representative, AUPE, 780-930-3335 or 780-919-4415 (cellular phone)
David Climenhaga, Communications Director, AUPE, 780-930-3311 or 780-717-2943 (cellular phone)