Strike still looms

By Lethbridge Herald on September 2, 2025.

Alejandra Pulido-Guzman
Lethbridge Herald

Despite a meeting between the Teachers’ Employer Bargaining Association (TEBA), the Alberta Teachers Association (ATA) and a mediator last week to continue negotiating a new central agreement, the opposing sides are still at an impasse. 

On Friday morning both the ATA and the provincial government held separate news conferences on their perspectives of the meeting.

Minister of Finance Nate Horner and Minister of Education and Childcare, Demetrios Nicolaides said the province is meeting the demands of teachers.

“On Aug. 26, TEBA made an offer to the ATA that included hiring 1,000 more teachers every year for the next three years at an estimated total cost of $750 million over the term, an offer that provides the exact request the union made in June of 2025,” said Nicolaides. 

But he added that on Aug. 27, the ATA’s bargaining team rejected this offer and said the ATA union leadership is only interested in playing politics.

“The campaign and rhetoric have intentionally misled the public and caused unnecessary stress for families and students,” said Nicolaides. “The bargaining team made it clear that the main interest was increasing wages for teachers and opposing the government.”

Nicolaides added that the ATA’s focus on wages and not classrooms complexities is not what they have been saying in public and that the government of Alberta will prioritize student.

“We cannot sit idle while the public, parents and students are manipulated into supporting a union that has shown its primary interest is in diverting supports away from the classroom to further drive-up teacher compensation,” said Nicolaides. 

He added that ATA leadership has demonstrated they are not interested in continuing conversations, but this was denied by ATA president Jason Schilling in a one-on-one interview with the Herald. 

Schilling also clarified some of the points made by the ministers earlier in the day. 

“While we appreciate the government’s move to the 3,000 new teachers, we recognize that’s just a drop in the bucket,” said Schilling. “And really, what is holding up negotiations right now is the question of salary.”

He said the 3,000 teachers offered were the last-ditch effort the ATA made to address swelling classroom conditions because everything else they put forward in their original proposal was denied. 

“They said no to everything else, except for this one thing. We can work with that; however, we need a substantially higher number of teachers coming into the system, but it’s a start.”

He said the salary increases were about making sure that teachers make up for lost inflation, current inflation and teacher retention and recruitment. 

“Because we are struggling to keep teachers within the system, especially substitute teachers, and we need to ensure that teachers get fair and acceptable pay that reflect the increasing workload nature of their jobs,” said Schilling. 

Horner said the government’s offer is appropriate, and that public sector unions the focus needs to be on getting students back into classrooms.

“In this instance, we are talking about a 12 per cent wage increase for every teacher. 95 per cent of the teachers will get more, up to 17 per cent and that’ what is on the table,” said Horner. “Depending on where this goes, I don’t see that offer changing because the data doesn’t show that it should. We want them to be at market, we have no appetite to be above market.”

He said the province simply can’t afford to offer more since it’s dealing with a higher-than-predicted deficit.  

To that, Schilling said teachers have only received a 5.75 per cent wage increase in the last 10 years, compared to other occupations that have kept up with inflation and have gained more than six per cent in the last 10 years. 

“Teachers are looking to gain some ground back that they lost over that period of time. When Minister Horner was talking about market evaluations, it was in Ontario West.” 

Alberta teachers are no longer the highest paid in the country, so being able to keep the pace with other teachers who are receiving higher wages and received wage increases over the last couple of years is something that the teachers of Alberta are looking for.”

Schilling also challenged Nicolaides’s claim that the ATA is simply playing politics.

“We have been working very hard for the last several years to highlight the concerns that teachers are seeing within their classrooms, including crowded classrooms, lack of resources, and now a ministerial order on school libraries.”