Musings On The "Pension Settlement" For Teachers

This has been rattling around for a few days, and I've had a hard time putting my finger on what's wrong with the issue.

Earlier this week, the provincial government announced that it would pay out the $2Bn pension liability in the Alberta teachers' pension fund in exchange for five years of labour "peace".

Superficially, it doesn't sound too bad - the teachers get a few dollars a month back on their paychecks, and modest raises in the coming years in exchange for agreeing not to go on strike for five years.

There is a "but" to all of this - and it's a huge problem. The collective agreement as announced is being imposed from Edmonton. However, the agreements themselves are between ATA locals and the various regional/municipal school boards, not the provincial government. Meanwhile, the provincial government holds the purse strings for education - and can arbitrarily strangle the ability of local school boards to implement the agreement that is being imposed.

For those who have lost track, or are new to Alberta, somewhere in the mid-90s the Klein government stripped local school boards of their ability to levy and collect property taxes to fund education. The power to levy and collect those taxes was absorbed by Edmonton and then they would parcel the money out to school boards.

During the Klein years, that control over the purse strings was used to brutally constrict funding of public education overall, and hamstring the local school boards' ability to respond to local concerns. Arguably, the current "unfunded liability" that the government is now so "generously" proposing to absorb was a direct result of policies imposed from Edmonton during the Klein years.

In other words, the government is agreeing to rebalance the books after sucking the teachers' wallets dry.

The second, and perhaps more important problem here is the fact that the agreement is being imposed on both sides of the equation from Edmonton. This is a direct violation of the very principle of collective bargaining in the first place. If this is to be the case, I argue that the contracts involving the ATA must in fact be contracts with the government in Edmonton specifically, not the local school boards. Anything else simply creates an artificial wall that protects the provincial government from being held responsible for the terms of the agreements.

Lastly, while the intent of the Klein era changes to school funding was to "cure" a perceived imbalance between large urban and rural school boards' ability to levy adequate funds. This latest agreement imposes a 3% increase on teachers across the province. I won't profess to know what the circumstances a teacher in High Prairie finds themselves in, but I do know that 3% in Calgary is less than half the rate of inflation - in other words it doesn't even cover the amount that people's bills have gone up in the last year!

Teachers have a tough decision to make - accept the government's offer to absorb the shortfall in the pension fund or push back and demand both a more realistic bargaining context and pay raises commensurate with the economic environment in which we live. A third option might be to punish the PC's at the next election - even if this deal is ratified.