See below an update from NASA Finance Vice-President James Guthrie regarding the remaining raises in your collective agreement.
Hello NASA members,
I’m sending this out to help everyone understand what’s happening for December raises as negotiated.
The short version is if you’re Continuous or Temporary staff you’re guaranteed a 1.5% raise on December 1st, and then there’s a possible retroactive 0.5% raise coming next year if Alberta’s economy performs well enough in 2023.
Unfortunately there are no raises for Casuals within our current collective agreement. Earlier in the year the NASA office had proposed to NAIT that Casuals should get the same April and December raises as all other staff, but NAIT was not interested.
If you look in our agreement you’ll see two December increases to the salary grids on pages 47-51, the 1.5% for December 1, and then another 0.5% for “December 1, 2023 GDP”.
There was an oversight in the finalizing of the agreement in that the GDP raise is not explained anywhere. Thankfully this was spelled out in the mediators report that both NAIT and NASA agreed to.
What it says there is that in February, 2024 there will be an average of Alberta’s GDP projections for 2023 taken from private sector institutes and if the average projection is 2.7% or more, then NASA members will get the 0.5% raise. Identical stipulations exist in many other public sector agreements.
The 0.5% if granted would then be retroactive to December 1, meaning you would also get a small lump sum payment to cover the increase going back more than 2 months.
There’s some good news and bad news on the GDP projections. Alberta’s Q1 fiscal update projected GDP for 2023 to be 3%. A September 19 projection from ATB was for 2.7%. We should expect a Q2 fiscal update from the Alberta government soon.
On the other hand, September projections from TD Bank are 2.3% GDP growth, and 2.2% from RBC.
So depending on who has made more accurate projections, NASA members could see that 0.5% retroactive raise next year, but it is not guaranteed.
That would be the last raise in our agreement which expires on June 30 next year, meaning Continuous and Temporary staff will have received raises of only 2.75-3.25% over a period when the Consumer Price Index increases in Alberta have been projected to be 15.8% from 2019-2023.
That then reflects a real cut in our wages of over 12% for Continuous and Temporary staff, and over 15% for Casuals. We know wages are a priority for a lot of NASA members as we go into bargaining next year. We’ve all sacrificed a lot over this period by agreeing to a cut that high, and we want to see NAIT come to the table with significant improvements to make up for what we’ve lost.
I encourage you all to keep in touch with your bargaining representatives, or reach out to Trevor or Shauna to find out how you can get involved in putting our union in a position of strength in negotiations.
As always it’s been a pleasure working with you all in my capacity as Finance Vice-President this year. I hope everyone has a happy holidays!
James Guthrie
NASA Finance Vice-President