The spectre of a teachers’ strike in the Grande Yellowhead Regional Division vanished last Thursday night when the local union voted to accept a memorandum of agreement with the GYRD board.

The teachers’ union voted 72 per cent in favour of the terms of  an agreement that had been signed by negotiators.

“Teachers viewed this as a mediocre deal,”  said David Grabowski, head of the union’s negotiating sub-committee and a teacher at Parkland Composite High School in Edson.

“While they accepted the memorandum, they did not accept it enthusiastically.”

The memorandum, which was drafted after lengthy negotiations on November 3, deals with the 2004/2005 school year, the current session and the 2006/2007 year. GYRD teachers had been without a new contract since August 31, 2004, but had been employed based on the terms of the previously existing contract in the interim.

The new agreement includes salary increases in each of the three years. For the previous year, teacher salaries will be boosted by 2.6 per cent, followed by increases of 2.8 and 3.1 per cent this year and next, for a cumulative increase of 8.5 per cent. The provincial mediator’s report had recommended an 8.3 per cent increase over three years, but the union rejected that proposal. Despite this small increase in the negotiated settlement, GYRD teachers will still be paid less than the provincial average, Grabowski told the Fitzhugh. The teachers had been pressing for larger increases, but decided that they were unlikely to make further progress on the matter.

“We thought it would be as far as negotiations would go and in order to avoid any further action and to avoid harm to students we needed to accept this contract,” said Grabowski.

Substitute teachers, meanwhile, will receive retroactive pay for the 2004/05 school year at the same rate as active teachers. The omission of this arrangement had been one of the other reasons cited by the union when they rejected the mediator’s suggestions.

The most contentious issue in the negotiations has been the teachers’ professional growth fund. The union had expressed a desire to see the fund increase along with teacher salaries, something that was not included in the mediator’s report.

The memorandum of agreement does not settle this matter specifically, but it does provide a mandate for a joint committee to study the issue. The committee will consist of teacher and trustee representatives who will examine the fund and make recommendations for the future. 

“We hope the joint committee will be able to assist us in resolving this contentious issue,” said Grabowski. “We are very willing to work with the board on this.”

The struggle to reach an agreement hasn’t helped the relationship between the GYRD board and teachers, Grabowski said. 

“The feelings between the board and teachers have been strained for some time and I’m not sure that this current agreement makes us feel like an appreciated … valuable part of the division.”

Representatives from the board would not comment on the agreement nor the teachers’ vote of approval until trustees had the opportunity to deliberate and vote on the memorandum themselves. The board had scheduled a special meeting Wednesday morning to do just that, but the outcome of that session was not available by press time.

Local parents are pleased that job action is not in the offing. After rejecting the mediator’s report in early October, the union had voted overwhelmingly in favour of applying for a strike vote.

“It’s always better for everyone to keep the children in school and keep the teachers working, “ said Magda Mahler, whose children attend Jasper Elementary School.

GYRD teachers last walked off the job in February 2003 for a period of two and a half weeks.