AUPE and Northern Lakes College sign tentative agreement
SLAVE LAKE – AUPE and Northern Lakes College have reached a tentative agreement for a three-year contract that includes across-the-board pay increases of at least 12.4 per cent for all support employees.
But some of the college’s approximately 100 employees, members of AUPE Local 071/009, will see their paycheques increase by almost 20 per cent, noted union Staff Negotiator Brian Randall.
Randall said a ratification vote for the local’s members is scheduled to take place Friday at the college’s main campus in Slave Lake, approximately 250 kilometres northwest of Edmonton.
“One of our goals in these negotiations was to get significant pay increases for our members at the bottom end of the college’s pay scale, and we were able to succeed at this objective,” said Randall, who led the Local 071/009 bargaining committee.
“The college also faces a pressing need to take these workers into consideration because like many employers in this area they are now competing with the energy sector for workers,” he observed.
Under the tentative agreement signed Tuesday evening, all employees represented by AUPE will receive pay increases of 4.3 per cent in the first year of the agreement, 4.1 per cent in the second year and 4 per cent in the third year, Randall said.
In addition, approximately 16 employees will receive another 2 per cent in the agreement’s first year as the result of a change to contract provision related to employees’ level of education, Randall said.
In the second year, he added, all employees with a salary lower than $35,000 per year will receive an additional $150 per month on the grid on their paycheques – an increase of about 9 per cent in base salary that year for eligible employees.
In addition, Randall said, the agreement includes improvements in vacation and sick leave provisions.
Voting will take place on Friday when all Northern Lakes College employees are required to be at the main campus in Slave Lake for an event organized by the employer.
Northern Lakes College operates from 26 communities in north-central Alberta.
Photo: Members of AUPE Local 071/009 and administrators from Northern Lakes College marked their signing of a tentative agreement Tuesday with this photograph.