Why Waging Ahead?
For many workers in the province, the so-called Alberta Advantage has disappeared.
Between 2018 and 2023, Alberta ranked last in wage growth among the provinces — at just a 2.3 percent increase to gross annual weekly earnings. For a CUPE member who makes $40,000 per year, that means they would make $11 more per week. For a member who makes $80,000 per year, that increase comes to $19 per week. But that 2.3 percent is an average across Alberta, and many CUPE members’ wages have not grown by even that low percentage.
Pair that with the rampant increase to the cost of living — a 30 percent increase in inflation between 2013 and 2023 — and it’s plain to see that workers in the province are suffering.
Real wages, or the purchasing power of someone’s paycheque, has decreased in Alberta by an average of 4.2 percent. All this as a combination of higher corporate profits, rising rents, and the skyrocketing cost of other basic necessities hit workers’ pockets all the harder. Between June 2023 and June 2024 alone, Alberta has seen some of the highest price rises in all of Canada for so many basic necessities. Here are a few examples:
- Beef has gone up 10.1 percent, higher than the Canadian average of 9.5 percent.
- Rent has gone up 14.5 percent, with a Canadian average of 8.5 percent.
- Homeowners and mortgage insurance has risen 11.5 percent, higher than the Canadian average of 9.2 percent.
- The price of gas has gone up 7 percent, compared to a Canadian average of just 0.4 percent.
What does this mean for members? Fifty-one percent of CUPE members in the province work at least one other job to pay the bills and 95 percent report some level of economic insecurity: struggling to afford childcare, monthly bills, or relying on food banks (often for the first time) to feed their families.