Alberta Institute President Peter McCaffrey joked it was great to see CUPE Alberta come out in support of school choice amid a conflict with education workers about wages. Without school choice, McCaffrey said teachers can only be hired by a government monopoly. “With school choice, they have a choice of hundreds (soon thousands) of different employers, which also helps lift wages!” tweeted McCaffrey. .McCaffrey was commenting on CUPE Alberta saying the government passed a law and used it to control the wages school boards can give their education workers. “To be clear, the Government of Alberta passed legislation and used it to dictate the wages school boards are allowed to bargain with CUPE education workers,” said CUPE Alberta..CUPE Alberta said on September 17 the government was violating collective bargaining rights by forcing education workers in CUPE 2545 and 2559 to the Dispute Inquiry Board. “The [Danielle] Smith government has demonstrated its total disregard for workers, their rights, and their aspirations for improving the quality of education for Fort McMurray students,” said CUPE Alberta President Rory Gill. “They can pre-empt tomorrow’s strike action, but they can’t destroy the solidarity that CUPE education workers have built in their preparations for this strike.”This ordeal comes after Smith said on September 17 the Alberta government has approved the School Construction Accelerator Program (SCAP) to respond to the province’s exploding student enrolment growth. .Smith says Alberta government to bring in School Construction Accelerator Program .Under the SCAP, Smith said the Alberta government will be increasing its kindergarten to Grade 12 capital budget for new school spaces and modernizations to about $8.6 billion over the next three years. “This will allow us to complete actual construction on approximately 50,000 new student spaces over the next three years — and to complete and open over 150,000 new spaces over the four years after that,” she said.
