4 more Alberta education support workers' union locals set to begin strike Monday

The union representing school support workers hopes a number of new districts joining job action will send a message to the province.

Four groups of education support workers in Alberta, including one in communities south of Edmonton, are expected to go on strike starting Monday.

Local 3484 of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), which represents 570 support workers in the Black Gold School Division, will begin job action that day, the union said last week, with picket lines at schools in Leduc, Beaumont, Devon, Thorsby and New Sarepta.

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Also beginning job action Monday are public and Catholic CUPE locals in Calgary and a local for the Foothills School Division south of the city in Okotoks, High River and Diamond Valley.

They will join the more than 4,000 education support workers already on strike in Edmonton, Fort McMurray and the Morinville-based Sturgeon School Division north of Alberta’s capital. Four hundred employees of the Parkland School Division west of Edmonton started work to rule on Tuesday.

Rory Gill, president of the Alberta division of CUPE, told CTV News Edmonton on Friday that other locals in the province have been bargaining with their school divisions, “trying to find a deal, but if they can’t find one, either, you’ll see them taking strike votes as well.”

Gill said CUPE members want the provincial government “to wake up” and fund public education properly, adding that 94 per cent of students in Alberta attend public schools and that the province spends the least on education of any in Canada.

“We don’t like being on strike, and we don’t like disrupting the learning of kids, but if we can’t save the system now, it’s now or never,” Gill said.

“We have to do it.”

The job action begins four days after a judge granted an injunction to block Alberta’s education minister’s order that prevented children with special needs from attending school as a support strike drags on.

Education Minister Demetrios Nicolaides issued an order last month allowing the board to keep children with “complex needs” home from school and engage in full- or part-time learning at home during the strike.

A group of parents and guardians took the province to court over the order, saying more than 3,700 children are being discriminated against by not being allowed to attend classes in person.

The injunction gives Nicolaides until Friday to consider a new ministerial order, although he can also seek additional time to create one.

Nicolaides said in a statement Friday to CTV News Edmonton that his ministry is “reviewing the judge’s decision at this time.”

With files from CTV News Edmonton’s Miriam Valdes-Carletti and The Canadian Press