Quote:
Originally Posted by GGG
Honestly when Alberta led the market 10 years, new teachers were having difficulty getting contracts without leaving the city, moral was much higher, classrooms were smaller teachers probably were overpaid relative to the rest of Canada.
The question around wages shouldn’t be comparison to other industry. They should be looking at retention rates, average experience of hires provincial migration of teachers and other metrics over years to evaluate if teachers are being paid a wage that attracts them to the province and keeps them in the job. It does not matter if they have had pay cuts over the last 10 years. That shouldn’t have a bearing on today’s wage. It doesn’t matter what others professionals earn. This is supply and demand in terms of anecdotes and the limited data we can find teaching in Alberta is becoming less desirable. That shouldn’t be fixed with wages and class conditions.
|
My understanding: For public pay, there is no market rate, so it gets inferred by doing a labor market analysis. They compare pay to teachers in other jurisdiction, pay for comparable private sector work in Alberta and pay for comparable public sector work in AB. Pay is then triangulated.
In 2015, the reason AB led teacher pay by 20% compared to other jurisdictions was in part because wages through the private sector in AB were substantially higher than the rest of the country for equal work. Over the past 10-years that spread has narrowed as AB wages stagnated at the same time wages across the country grew. So AB teachers wages also stagnated as teachers across the rest of the country got wage increases.
I'm assuming the ATA gets that, which is why they're pretty limited on arguing for more pay than is on offer.
At least we know now what the ATA is asking for: 5,000 teachers over four years, while the province is asking for 3,000. That's a differential of about 0.5% per year over four years. I don't think that's a bridge that requires a strike to cross. Or at least not a long one...