Foothills School Division education workers held a rally in Okotoks on the weekend alongside fellow union members across the province.
CUPE Local 5040 held a rally on Saturday, Sept. 21 by the Foothills Composite High School parking lot from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. as part of an Alberta-wide day of action.
"It's a day of action for all unionized workers," said Local 5040 president Lesley Cole, who was also joined by members of other unions such as the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees (AUPE) and the Health Sciences Association of Alberta (HSAA) at the rally.
"We need a living wage, we need better conditions in our workplace and the government needs to wake up and listen."
The rally, part of CUPE’s education day of action across Alberta, comes after the Foothills union struck a new deal with the Foothills School Division. The contract, which was reached Aug. 22, expired on Aug. 31, four days after it was ratified on Aug. 27.
The new deal between the education workers and their employer saw education assistants get an eight per cent raise while all other support staff got the 2.75 per cent increase mandated by the government.
The agreement had concluded four years of bargaining between the union and employer, during which time a contract was not in place, with retroactive pay starting from Sept. 1, 2023.
Local 5040 and Foothills School Division will be back to the bargaining table on Sept. 26, said Cole.
"We'll be exchanging proposals and then we hope to achieve more than we did last time," she said. "We did OK, but it wasn't enough and we need more for our workers.
"We support the future of Alberta and we need to be recognized as doing so."
CUPE’s rallies in Okotoks and across Alberta follow a similar series of province-wide rallies by AUPE, the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees, earlier in September.
Members at the rally also expressed solidarity with members of CUPE 2545 and CUPE 2559 in Fort McMurray, where a planned strike by education workers was halted by the Government of Alberta through the provincial Disputes Inquiry Board.
