Update April 3. The city and workers have agreed a new contract based on the tentative agreement. Socialist Alternative still says the workers could have won a better contract, by using their power.
Edmonton city workers from Civic Service Union 52 (CSU 52) were ready to take strike action on March 14 after rejecting the city’s final offer just days earlier. The union represents technical, professional, administrative and clerical workers for the City of Edmonton and Edmonton Public Libraries (EPL). 87.5 percent of eligible members voted, and 87.6 percent voted no. Picketing at several libraries and other locations was scheduled. It seemed likely that many Edmontonians were ready to come out in solidarity and support the strike. However, the strike was halted at the last minute when the bargaining teams reached a tentative agreement with the City of Edmonton and EPL.
Despite not having any wage increases since 2018, the union’s demands were quite modest — a 1.5 percent raise for 2021; 1.5 percent for 2022; and 2 percent for 2023. Those kinds of increases aren’t even enough to make up for the runaway inflation eroding workers’ real wages, offering them no breathing room. The City’s final offer matched the union’s final ask (5 percent either way) but delayed any increases by one year.
As the employers faced the threat of Edmonton’s first civic service strike in nearly 50 years, the eleventh-hour tentative agreement turned out to be a slight improvement for the union: a $1,000 lump sum payment instead of a wage increase for 2021; a 1.25 percent raise for 2022; a 2 percent increase for 2023; and a 3 percent increase for 2024. Ultimately a 6.25 percent salary increase and a lump-sum payment, instead of the 5 percent the union asked for, albeit delayed by one year. The new agreement still needs to be ratified by the union membership.
The improved agreement shows that merely the threat of a strike is a powerful weapon to win concessions from the bosses, but it would be possible to get a bigger win by demanding even more and striking when the bosses refuse to budge. To protect workers’ wages from inflation, unions should fight for Cost-of-Living Adjustments (COLA) in their contracts that will automatically increase wages with inflation. If Edmonton’s civic service workers are brave enough to reject this deal and fight for more, they could finally win some breathing room after eighteen months of negotiations and five years with nothing. In 2023, longshore workers in BC rejected two tentative agreements and won big, overcoming employer and government interference and winning wage increases that covered the increased cost of living.
After all, if the mayor and city council get to have the privilege of automatic raises, (2.41 percent per year) why shouldn’t the city’s workers? When the threat of the strike loomed large, mayor Amarjeet Sohi tried to pit worker against worker by running to the press with a statement warning that any increase to the wages of city workers would result in higher taxes for Edmontonians. Yet Mayor Sohi makes more than Alberta’s premier and ranks as one of the highest-paid mayors in Canada! If there’s no money to pay the workers what they deserve, reducing the salaries of officials and taxing the rich and big corporations should do the trick. Ultimately, there’s no legitimate excuse Sohi can make, and no one should fall for his excuses.
Miserly politicians should remember that “Not a wheel turns, not a phone rings, not a light bulb shines without the kind permission of the working class!”
